


The Offering Tree

by BootsnBlossoms, Kryptaria



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fae & Fairies, Fluff, M/M, Mythology and Folklore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:42:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BootsnBlossoms/pseuds/BootsnBlossoms, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1993, while on leave from the Royal Navy, James Bond brings Alec Trevelyan to Skyfall Lodge. There, he hopes to find the privacy and courage to discover if Alec is just interested in friendship or if he, like James, wants something more.</p><p>But Skyfall Lodge hasn't been deserted since James' parents died. The Bond family has been tied to the land for hundreds of years. And as it turns out, the old legends of the family's fae guardian might just be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to our betas, stephrc79 and SnogAndAGrope for their fantastic feedback. We couldn't do this without you guys!

The property gates had long since decayed, and the walls had been torn down to supply stone for enclosing pastures. Only one gatepost remained: a squared plinth with a stag atop, head raised proudly high. _Skyfall_ read the engraving beneath the stag’s hooves. If James concentrated, he could remember, barely, his father telling him that the stag stood between Heaven and Earth, antlers holding up the cloudy sky.

He turned the beat-up old car onto the drive that wound down the hillside to the old house, thinking that this might all be a mistake. But then, as the flickering headlamps swept through the gloom and passed over the towering, foreboding walls of the house, Alec Trevelyan leaned forward, one hand gripping the dash, and muttered softly in Russian. James wasn’t certain of the exact translation, but he thought — he _hoped_ — Alec was impressed.

“This is yours? All of it?” Alec asked, twisting to look around into the darkness. “How much earth?”

“How much _land_ ,” James corrected. “Or we might say property.”

 _“Spasibo,”_ Alec muttered. “How much property is yours?”

“There’s a lake there,” James said, pointing off to the left of the house. “After that’s the old family chapel. Our own church.”

“You’re religious?”

James laughed and turned off the engine. “Not even close to it. All the old properties had chapels, though. Not many are still standing. Help me with the bags.”

When they’d reached the last town before Skyfall, they’d stopped for supplies. No one lived in the house, though Kincaid and Patricia, the old caretakers, stopped by every once in a while, and Kincaid still hunted on the property, which was rich in birds and rabbits.

They had a fortnight’s leave, and James had won an extra few days’ leave off their commanding officer in a poker game. They’d spent one day driving north, which meant James had seventeen days before they had to leave. Seventeen days to figure out if he was really interested in Alec and if Alec was interested in him. Seventeen days to get up the courage to say something and risk Alec beating the hell out of him if he wasn’t.

It took three trips to get their bags and groceries to the front door. James knelt down and dug his fingers into the damp earth that had worked into the cracks between the stones in the wall, until he was able to pry the stone free. Alec crouched down nearby and lit a cigarette lighter. Pale flame glowed on the black carapaces of tiny beetles skittering for cover.

“What are you doing? Are we” — Alec hesitated, searching for the words — “breaking and entering?”

“You’re watching too many American police shows,” James teased as he stuck his hand into the filthy little niche. He felt around, ignoring the cold, wet dirt that probably housed even more bugs, and finally felt something hard. He trapped it in two fingers, pulled it free, and then wiped it clean on his jeans. Alec brought the lighter closer, showing a heavy iron key.

“Clever,” Alec approved, getting to his feet. He held out a hand to help James up. James tried not to read too much into it — it was nothing more than a polite gesture — but he could still feel Alec’s hand after they let go.

It took him a couple of tries to get the key into the lock, and he had to force it against the spring in order to work the bolt. Finally, though, the lock gave way, and the door swung open.

The smell of warm, stale air drove him back into Alec, who caught him by the shoulder to steady him before pulling away, both of them apologising. With a cough to cover the moment, James dropped the key in his pocket and said, “Sorry, I should have warned you. It’ll be dusty until we can air it out.”

“Yes, because barracks full of sailors and laundry are better?” Alec challenged.

James grinned at him. “Fair enough. Put that away,” he said, waving a hand at the lighter. He hadn’t had the electric turned on — he couldn’t afford the fees — so he’d acquired two torches from inventory. He dug them out of his bag and offered one to Alec, trying not to take notice when their hands touched again.

With another quiet, _“Spasibo,”_ Alec turned on his torch and aimed the light inside. There was just enough wind to stir up the dust and cobwebs clinging to the walls.

“Go on in, take a look around. I’ll bring everything inside,” James invited. Then he gave himself a moment to admire Alec’s tall, lithe body before he turned his attention to rifling through the bags.

He’d never been so grateful that Alec was a foreigner as when they’d been shopping. They’d filled a trolley with a fortnight’s worth of tinned food, bread, potatoes, and crisps, which made sense — they’d be living without refrigeration, too. But while Alec had gone to get beer and vodka, James had quickly picked up a pint of cream, a pot of honey, a tin of shortbread, and a wheel of hard cheese. When they’d met up again, Alec had looked a bit confused, but he hadn’t asked, saving James the embarrassment of explaining.

Now, he carried one of the shopping bags out towards the lake, playing the torchlight over the earth to keep from turning an ankle. Even in late spring, it was chilly here at night, and he was shivering by the time he reached the old tree stump by the lake.

Lightning had destroyed the ancient tree ages ago — before the lodge had been built, or so the stories went. Despite the damp, rot had never taken hold. Instead, the wood had hardened, almost fossilising, and wind and weather had smoothed the jagged edges of the stump into the gentle shape of a bowl. The remains of an old branch had broken off into a flat shelf.

James set the bag down and used his hand to scoop rainwater out of the basin. He wiped his hand on his jeans and flinched as the wet chill soaked through. Instead of using the serviettes in his pocket to dry his hand, he cleaned out the basin instead, careful to wipe out the last of the silty earth collected at the bottom.

When the bowl was as clean as he could manage, he shoved the serviettes in his pocket and took the cream from the bag. Feeling foolish, he opened the container and poured the contents into the stump. He hoped Alec wasn’t watching him through a window, though in the darkness, he wouldn’t be able to see much at all. With luck, the gun room had Alec distracted.

He shook the last drop from the container and then put it back in the bag. Then he used his sleeve to wipe the tree branch clean, sweeping away the debris and damp. He opened the small tin of shortbread and carefully piled the biscuits on one side of the shelf. He used his folding knife to cut a chunk off the wheel of cheese and put that on the other side. Hurrying now, aware that Alec might be wondering where he’d gone, he opened the jar of honey and quickly dumped some over the shortbread. More came out than he’d expected, and it dripped off the shelf and into the basin of cream. He had to use his finger to clean the edge of the jar, and when he sucked it off, he tasted earth and leaves along with the sweet honey.

Then he crammed the rubbish back into the bag and hurried back towards the house, hoping Alec didn’t decide to go for an early morning walk towards the lake. The local animals would surely clean out every last scrap of food, or so James hoped, but just in case, he’d suggest they go to the hills on the other side of the property for their morning run.

 

~~~

 

It had been such a long, long time since Q had smelled purified honey. He was in the middle of tricking a fox into a rabbit warren that he’d ‘refined’ to have nothing but dead ends and scraps of old vegetables when the sticky scent floating through the night air caught his attention. Fortunately for the almost-doomed fox, it drew him in like a moth to the flame — golden and refined and without the threat of stings and winged attack.

The path to the old, abandoned rock house on the hill was overgrown and populated by young animals that hadn’t learned to avoid Q yet. He had a merry time ripping up grass, moss, and wild mint and spreading thistle. He dragged his toes in the mud to disrupt every worm and beetle that was unfortunate enough to be in his way, and cackled joyously whenever he was fortunate enough to send red, orange, brown, and white moths fluttering up towards the sky like bits of old paper. He was almost tempted to make a game of it, but the closer he got to the scent of the honey, the more he realised it was laced with something else.

Q stopped in the middle of the moor, feeling the touch of moonlight on his bare, shadowy skin. _Cream_ , he realised. Mice darted in to nip at his long toes, interrupting his attempts to summon up foggy memories of sweet cream and honey cakes and blond-haired men with their games of hide and seek. He glided forwarded, kicking distractedly at the mice, lost in memory.

Except that he _couldn’t_ remember the details. They had sun-washed hair and blue eyes like the midday sky Q had never seen. There were gifts and offerings, gentle and awed touches. There was laughter. There were games and food and long nights when Q wasn’t alone. It burned like a flame inside him — wonderful and painful and sparking with possibility.

The scent drew him towards the old burnt tree stump that was at the centre of Q’s almost-memories. Cautiously, because Q always had to be wary of traps, he circled towards it, hiding under the bushes near the edge of the lake, green eyes sharp with suspicion that couldn’t quite fully misplace his curiosity and the much more alien sense of hope. Finally he left the edge of the moor and crawled silently over the grass, the tempting scent of food slowly chipping away at his fear of being captured. He took no chances, moving slowly, listening carefully, as he approached the place of offering.

Long moments later, he crawled over the dead roots to peer cautiously up over the edge of the tree stump. His senses and dim memories hadn’t lied — there was honey, and cream, and other things. He slid over the edge to lean into the well and dipped his tongue cautiously in the hollow of the stump; the flavour struck him like lightning, and he shivered in pleasure.

As tempted as he was to lap it all up immediately, his attention was drawn to the other things. A hard cake of some kind that crumbled when he ran his nail over it. It was sweet and white, and crumbled deliciously when he dipped it into the honey and cream. The other thing was like cream but harder and sharper. _Cheese_ , he thought, remembering when the humans would make it and leave him the scraps. It was also good, but didn’t go well with the cream and honey and sweetcake. Perhaps he could take it to the foxes and watch them dance with the force of their begging. _That_ would be fun.

With a laugh of delight, Q threw himself into the well and rolled in the cream and honey that dripped down from the branch, drinking it as he splashed. The offering itself was wonderful and would be very useful in playing tricks on the wildlife, but that wasn’t the best thing.

The best thing was that offerings meant people. Meant play. Meant not being alone. He could smell the hint of the human who’d left the offering; it was a hint of not-wild that stirred the memories of Q’s long-ago playmates. It was familiar in a way that comforted Q. Had his human friends returned?

Once he’d drank up all the cream and honey and licked up the last crumb of the sweetcake, he sat up in the hollow of the tree and peered through the darkness at the old rock house, cradling the cheese for the foxes in his hands.

Light gleamed out into the night, shining through the glass windows. Humans. _His_ humans. He wasn’t alone.

Q grinned.


	2. Chapter 2

Skyfall Lodge, James thought hazily as he stared up at a cobweb-filled corner, wasn’t so bloody horrid after all. He didn’t have particularly good memories of childhood — nor bad ones, to be honest, or any ones at all. He’d spent such little time here, after all. Born in West Germany, childhood holidays in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and then suddenly his parents were gone. James hadn’t been able to return until now.

He reached over the edge of the couch for his beer and closed his eyes, listening to the sound of Alec rattling around in the gun room. His voice was full of enthusiasm as he declared each ‘new’ discovery in a polyglot of English and Russian. Rifles, shotguns, and pistols and bayonets. And there were a few swords and axes and a bloody half-suit of armour, tarnished with age, holding the sort of pike that would unhorse riders and effortlessly chop off heads.

Alec liked it here. Of course, he’d never seen anything like the place. He hadn’t revealed much about his own youth, except for brief mentions of blocky state housing, with two rooms for an entire family and a shared loo down the hall. He’d grown up poor and come into the money his parents had secured in British banks before they’d gone back to the USSR; James had gone the other way, after the life insurance ran out.

Not that he was worried about money, particularly. The Navy paid enough and provided lodging and food, and he and Alec had both got into the bloody SBS, where they belonged. And that meant the most dangerous missions, so retirement wasn’t an issue — not that James was interested in marrying and settling down to raise a pack of children.

He leaned over to set down the now-empty bottle, and his eye fell on the fireplace that provided the only light in the room. It added more than a little smoke, too, thanks to a now-scorched nest in the chimney. Hopefully it had been empty.

“Oi! Alec!” he called as he got up off the couch. He hadn’t bothered removing the once-white sheet draped over the creaky cushions; dust puffed up everywhere.

Alec came up the two steps from the gun room, holding an oil lamp. It highlighted his roguish grin and blond hair so pale it was nearly white. “This is fucking incredible,” he declared as he came into the study.

“We’ll go out shooting tomorrow,” James promised, going to the side of the fireplace. “Come here.” Turning down the flame to conserve lamp oil, Alec walked over, looking at him expectantly. James grinned, anticipating Alec’s reaction, and reached out. “Give me your hand.”

The hesitation was there, but only momentary, too quick for James to decipher. He put his hand in James’ and allowed James to guide his fingers under the carved mantle over the fireplace.

When his fingers ran over the hidden catch, he said, “What’s —” and then cut off when the old latch gave way. Part of the wall by the fireplace swung open, revealing a low, narrow chamber. Alec let out a startled breath and crouched down to look inside, turning up the lamp’s flame again.

James swallowed against the memory of the last time he’d been down there. He’d avoided going near the old priest hole since Kincaid had told him his parents were dead. He couldn’t quite remember it, but Kincaid said he went down there and stayed down in the tunnel for two days, hidden from the world.

But he wanted to show Alec; he wanted to see _this_ , the way his green eyes lit up with fascination and the delight of discovery. Or, well, the back of his head, now, because Alec crawled in and called back, “Where do the stairs go?”

James leaned down over Alec’s shoulder, and it was perfectly natural to put a hand on his back for balance. He had just enough muscle to show the promise of bulk, if he worked at it. “The tunnel leads all the way to the old chapel.”

Alec turned to look back without flinching from the touch. “Is that — _pravda_ — It’s true?”

“Lead the way,” James said, giving him his best grin.

With a laugh, Alec made his way down the steps cut into the earth, until he could stand mostly upright. James followed, and behind them, the spring-latched hidden door closed. He used the excuse of darkness to take hold of the back of Alec’s shirt.

Alec glanced over his shoulder, and obligingly moved the lantern a bit to the side. “Do you want to go first?”

“Go ahead. Just don’t lose me.”

 

~~~

 

Leading the foxes on a merry chase over the moor towards the small building, driven by the amazing treat that was human-made cheese, was more than just a fun game of whipping the normally intelligent, sneaky creatures into a mindless frenzy. He didn’t want to go into the human building by himself. If there was anything menacing waiting for him, the foxes would provide an excellent distraction so Q could get away.

He’d chosen the outer building first. His almost-memories told him that the humans didn’t live there — they only visited on rare occasions — so Q would have a better chance at catching their scent without actually running into them yet. He needed to know what they were like before he offered the chance at games. Were they young or old? Tainted with darkness or pleasantly playful? Q was hopeful, because the offering meant _something_ , but he wasn’t reckless.

The foxes yapped and chattered and writhed in a mass of red fur around his feet as he raced towards the chapel. He stopped his erratic journey to occasionally toss little, teasing chunks of cheese at the foxes, enjoying the gnashing of teeth that followed. But it still only took him moments to get to the little rock structure. He dumped the cheese in the middle of the floor for the foxes to fight over and scampered up the wall to the ceiling to get a better look at everything.

The walls were pierced with high, narrow openings, and the floor was broken up with wood benches. Q crawled along a squared wooden beam, avoiding the iron nails, and made his way deeper into the great open space. At the far end was a carved stone cross raised up on a high floor. He had the vague memory of someone explaining that it meant something to humans, but Q couldn’t remember. It was an interesting bit of achievement, certainly, but he’d never understood human fascination with their own workings.

Then he heard noise — not the foxes, but something else, heavy steps that came from under the earth, in the tunnel that the humans had dug long ago, as if they were rabbits building a warren. A part of the floor swung up, and light pierced the open space, driving Q to crawl up the wall higher into the shadows, all the way up at the apex of the roof. Startled, the foxes scattered to hide in the corners.

There were two of them, with hair like the pale heart of flame, both wearing ugly, heavy human clothes. One held a lamp, and as it — _he_ , Q thought — raised the lamp and turned, shadows danced across the wall. He had green eyes, like grass at the beginning of autumn.

The other one, though. The other one was _familiar._ It wasn’t just the icy blue eyes and the flaxen hair and the way he moved that spoke of adventures and warmth. It was the smell.

Q crawled silently under the beam to hang upside down. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The man’s scent, so familiar and wonderful, hit him with a force that almost made him let go of the beam. He shuddered gleefully as he realised this wasn’t just the human who had left the offering. He was the human who belonged here, whose family’s scent crawled along the walls of both the buildings with a permanence that spoke of generations. This human was _his_.

 

~~~

 

“Fucking amazing,” Alec breathed as he turned his grin on James. He gestured back at the trapdoor, asking, “Why do you have the tunnel?”

“It was to escape the house, if anyone ever attacked,” James explained, moving a little closer to Alec. When he realised he was staring, he looked down and picked up a piece of one of the pews, worm-chewed and damp-rotted. “It was already in disrepair — falling apart — by the time I was born.”

“But Scotland was always religion?”

“Religious,” James corrected, though he wished Alec hadn’t asked for his help with English. Alec’s accent was gorgeous, but the way he constructed his sentences was... Well, it was bloody _charming_ , is what it was. But if there was one place where being different was guaranteed to draw harassment, it was the military, and as Alec’s best friend — possibly his _only_ friend — James wanted to help him fit in.

“Religious,” Alec said, gesturing over at the old, carved cross.

“It’s complicated,” James explained. He’d never paid much attention in history class, except for that one year he’d had a truly stunning teacher. And that year, he’d only paid enough attention to get in trouble in hopes of private detention on her desk. He managed it, too, by the end of the term. “There are a lot of beliefs here, all conflicting, but all supposedly valid.”

Alec huffed and shot James a slyly amused grin. “You English are complicated.”

“You have no idea.” James walked up to the little stage at the end of the room. “First, the land was pagan. The people believed in gods and spirits,” he said, looking back at Alec. “Then the Romans came, first with new gods, and then as Catholics. And then that was outlawed, and everyone was supposed to be C of E, until the law was repealed.” He was fairly certain that was what had happened, though he was fuzzy on the details.

“It’s more interesting than no religion at all,” Alec said as he ran a hand over a dusty pew. “What do you believe?”

“Not really my area.” James shrugged, thinking of the offerings he’d put out on the lightning-struck tree. “The locals leave offerings for the spirits to guard the house or to keep them from mischief. Things like food.”

“The _Vila_ ,” Alec said, making James look over at him. “Young women — not human — who live in the forest. The _babushkas_ would bake sweet cakes for them and give them flowers and ribbons.”

James grinned at the thought of Alec trudging out into the woods at the behest of some old lady to leave offerings for fairy spirits. “It’s the same here.” Impulsively, he said, “Let me show you.”

“More tunnels?”

James shook his head and headed for the door, touching Alec’s arm as he passed. “The offering tree.”

 

~~~

 

The foxes skittered back into the middle of the room as soon as the humans were gone, searching for any tiny remnant of cheese. If Q hadn’t been so interested in the humans, he would have made a game of pretending to throw things and watching them mindlessly run after invisible food.

But the humans were beautifully distracting. There was no way Q was going to let them out of his sight, if he could avoid it. He let his nails drag through the rafter just before allowing himself to fall to the floor, indulging in a little flip on the way down. He rolled as soon as he hit the floor, then skittered into the safety of the building’s shadows.

They went outside, and Q followed close behind as they headed onto the moor. He stayed low to the ground, making himself small enough to hide in the grass as they walked. When he was sure that they were paying attention to each other and the way ahead rather than on the ground, he braved getting closer. Not the green-eyed one who had the bitter aura of cold around him — that one, Q hadn’t decided if he had a feeling about one way or the other. But the blue-eyed one who was familiar and warm and wonderful; he couldn’t help but dart far enough forward to touch.

Then there was red blood and a shout and Q shrank back in horror at the scoring of three lines he’d left through the man’s clothes and into his skin. He’d forgotten how delicate humans were. Q’s nails in the moonlight were meant for defence, and they worked too well against fragile human skin.

They were both shouting — at the night and at each other — though some of the shouts were concerned. The grass-eyed one got close to Q’s human, crouching down to look at the bloody wounds. When he touched, Q’s human let out a hiss of pain.

Rage flared up in Q — both at himself for forgetting how easily damaged humans were, and at the one-who-wasn’t-Q’s for making it worse. He writhed up out of the grass behind the crouching one and jumped to bite him angrily on his shoulder before diving back into the mud of the moor to hide, laughing at the way he shouted in anger and pain.

But he didn’t leave Q’s human alone. If anything, they got infuriatingly _closer_ , fumbling with the light as they tried to see both wounds at once. Finally, as their voices eased to low rumbling, like thunder, they turned and hurried to the house, with Q’s human taking hesitant, lurching steps.

Disappointed that they weren’t going to stay outside and play after all, Q followed, sliding as close to the ground as possible, staying within a few paces to make sure the cold-smelling one didn’t do anything else to hurt his human. Q’s teeth were terribly sharp, and though he didn’t like the taste of people, there was still some honey to be licked from the offering table if he were desperate enough. He wouldn’t hesitate to bite again, if it looked like his human was in danger.

 

~~~

 

“Fucking buggering _shit_ ,” Alec said as he ducked his head, letting James ease the shirt over his head and then down his arm. He twisted to try and look at the wound, and James put a hand to his face to stop him.

“Don’t. Let me clean this first,” he said, though they had nothing. Not even a single damned plaster. Vodka, he decided, though he cringed at the thought of how much it would hurt. Vodka and a clean shirt torn to rags. And then they could go to town tomorrow. “Sit down,” he said, thinking the fireplace threw off more light than the oil lamp.

As Alec lowered himself to the floor, he asked, “What was it? Is it... _infitsirovannyy_? A sick animal?”

“Infected?” James guessed as he knelt down behind Alec. He took the T-shirt and wadded it up against the wound with one hand. He tried to sound confident as he said, “No. It was a fox or a badger or something. We must have got too close to its den.”

 _“Vodoboyzan’,”_ Alec said tightly. “Sick animals. Sick dogs —”

“Rabies? No. There’s no rabies anywhere in Great Britain,” James said.. He reached for the bottle of vodka in the bag of provisions by the couch and offered it to Alec. “We have to clean it, though.”

Alec took a deep breath, muscles going tense under the makeshift bandage. He opened the bottle and muttered something under his breath before he took a swallow. James couldn’t stop himself from putting his free hand on Alec’s neck so he could rub his fingers into the tight muscles, thumb tracing the line of Alec’s spine, up into his hairline. They were both overdue for haircuts. James was glad of it; Alec looked better with longer hair easing the sharply sculpted lines of his face.

With automatic courtesy, Alec offered him the bottle. He took a drink, thinking that this would all be easier if he were drunk. This wasn’t how he wanted the night to go at all.

Somehow, they made it through half the bottle before James got around to easing the bloody T-shirt away from the wound. Alec passed back the bottle and leaned forward, saying, “Go ahead.”

James took a deep breath and then poured a splash of alcohol over the wound. Alec let out a string of paint-blistering curses but didn’t flinch away. Quickly, James set the bottle down and put one hand on the back of Alec’s neck, the other on his bicep. Thinned blood ran down Alec’s back, soaking into the waistband of his jeans.

They stayed like that for a minute, with Alec taking deep breaths under James’ hands, and slowly James realised his fingers were moving, gently massaging over Alec’s skin. The wound in Alec’s shoulder was still bleeding, though it had slowed.

“It’s better,” James said, leaning in closer. “It’s not bleeding as much.”

Alec nodded and didn’t pull away. He even pushed back against James, until his bare skin just brushed against the jacket James was still wearing. Only the fact that he’d have to let go of Alec kept James from taking the jacket off. Maybe his shirt, too.

“Thanks,” Alec said, his voice quiet and rough.

“You all right?” James asked.

Alec nodded, turning as he leaned back. He rested one hand on James’ leg — his good leg — and said, “I’ll do you now?”

James’ mind, already fuzzy at the edges, shut down. He stared at Alec, and his hand went tight around Alec’s arm. The other hand reached — when had he let go of Alec’s neck? — and he caught himself a second before he could touch Alec’s face.

A faint, new smile appeared on Alec’s face, one James had never seen. It was a little tentative and uncertain. He looked down, hiding his eyes, and then touched James’ other leg, saying, “Shit. It’s still bleeding. Take off your jeans.”

James couldn’t hold back his nervous laugh. “Right,” he said, thinking that was just his fucking luck. This _definitely_ wasn’t how he wanted to spend tonight.

It took him three tries to undo his belt buckle, and only fear that Alec would offer help finally made him figure it out. Even though he wasn’t body shy, he turned his back before he shoved his jeans down, only then remembering he was still wearing his boots. He swore under his breath, sat back down on the floor, and untied one.

“You’re drunk,” Alec accused, grinning. He turned to unlace James’ other boot, working gently to keep from dragging his jeans over his bleeding calf.

“So are you,” James shot back, though the hell of it was, Alec probably _wasn’t_ drunk. He’d grown up drinking vodka, which gave him a distinct advantage over James at the moment. “That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?”

“You’re not as drunk as you should be,” James accused, giving up on his other boot.

Alec looked up, meeting his eyes for one breathless minute in which everything seemed to go still. Then he looked back down to carefully remove James’ boot, and muttered something under his breath.

“Language,” James prompted. He might be more drunk, but he wasn’t going to give up the advantage of helping Alec learn English. Not that James hadn’t learned Russian, because he had; it was just mostly curses. Alec was _very_ good at profanity.

Alec tossed the boot aside and went for his other foot. “Why do you want me to be drunk?”

No force on earth could compel James to answer that honestly even in his own mind, much less aloud, mostly because he _didn’t_. Well, a little, yes, but not too drunk. Just enough that they wouldn’t both be wondering about each other, wondering if either of them would say no or tell anyone else. James _definitely_ needed to be a little more drunk, but he’d already made up his mind. Now, he just needed the courage to act on it.

“I didn’t _say_ I wanted you drunk,” he finally said, when he realised Alec was staring at him, waiting for an answer.

Alec’s laugh was short and a little rough around the edges, though not with the pain he had to still be feeling from his shoulder. He gave up on James’ boot long enough to take another drink. “Better?” he asked as he took hold of James’ calf to pull the boot off his foot.

“Fucking Russian,” James accused, claiming the bottle for himself.

Then Alec swiped it out of his hand and set it aside. He pushed at James’ legs, raising them enough so he could pull his jeans down the rest of the way. Too late, James realised that the sight of Alec down between his legs, stripping him, had worked past the pain from his calf, waking his body. He felt his face go hot and twisted his hips to hide the evidence of his arousal, because he needed to be more fucking subtle than that.

Alec put a hand on his knee. When their eyes met again, James stopped moving. Stopped breathing.

There was _interest_. There was fucking interest there, all right. James was positive of it.

He swallowed and relaxed under Alec’s touch. Alec slowly looked down the length of James’ body. Then he took a deep breath and moved his hand to James’ other leg, the one that was bleeding. “Turn over.”

James hesitated, because there were things he’d done and things he hadn’t done, and while he was curious, he wasn’t at all _certain_ that he knew his own limits. He thought about what he’d packed in his bag, hidden in a little pocket under mundane things like his toothbrush and comb and extra socks.

“James,” Alec scolded.

“Sorry.” James twisted onto his knees on the old, dusty rug. Then he eased down, and the ache in his calf disappeared under the pressure of his own body against his pants and the rug. He held himself very, very still, refusing to move his hips at all.

He flinched, though, when Alec’s hand smoothed up from the back of his knee to his thigh and down again. “Stay still. I’ll make this fast.”

 _Take your time_ , James thought, lost in the images that came to mind — right up until Alec poured the vodka over the cuts.

 

~~~

 

Q watched the humans interact, thoroughly confused. He wasn’t the best judge of human behaviour, it was true — he barely remembered a time when he had contact with them at all. But this didn’t seem quite normal. If Q were there, in the grass-eyed one’s place, he would have taken care of the wound immediately and saved the play for someplace more comfortable. He hung upside down from the antler decoration and watched them dance around each other like tentative fools. Q couldn’t imagine that the light caresses and soft words were much comfort or solace for two humans who so desperately needed touch. He stretched from where he was suspended, reaching pointlessly towards them, _wanting_.

Q’s irritation with not-his-human was steadily growing the longer he watched, however. His human wanted touch just as badly as Q did — not just ambiguous caresses, but the kind that brought pleasure — and though he was in a place to provide real pleasure, the grass-eyed one didn’t.

Not normal at all, Q decided.

There wasn’t much Q could do from his vantage point, however. He distracted himself from his human’s impatience and pain with plans of revenge. The foxes were no good for coordinated effort, but weasels? Oh, they could be very useful indeed.

But while he was still caught up in thinking and planning, the grass eyed one _hurt_ Q’s human — hurt him badly enough that he muffled a shout and went tense. The stench of sweat overcame the softer, sweeter smell of desire, all of it tinged with the sharp, nose-stinging odour that rose from whatever had been poured over the bleeding wound.

Before Q could actually make a conscious decision on the best course of action, he’d released his hold from the antler sculpture to dive down. He aimed not at his human, but the other one, nails fully extended. Once could have been accidental, but twice? Q’s righteous fury made the little room turn a shade of red in Q’s eyes, and he raked his nails across the grass-eyed one’s head with all the sadism of a wasp. The human’s cry was loud and satisfying, and Q couldn’t hold back a screech of triumph as he landed and rolled away.

Then they were coming after him, shouting and thrashing. The sting-smelling liquid went flying with a crack of broken glass, and Q dove under the dusty white sheet, disappearing in the shadow before they could see him.

He snuck outside, making his way through the crack at the bottom of the door, determined to stay close without being seen. He was more confused than ever, though; he could understand why the cold-smelling one would want to hurt him, but not _his_ human. Q had only been protecting him, after all. Why had he seemed so angry?

A snuffling sound alerted Q to the presence of something behind him, and he cast an annoyed look back to find a fox near his feet. It was huffing and sniffing and watching Q’s hands. Irritated, Q tore his gaze from the humans long enough to give the pestering beast a swift kick to the nose, which sent it running. Grimly satisfied, Q returned his gaze to his human.

The door opened. Q darted for the shadows over the door on the far side of the little empty space. His human shouted something — Q _thought_ he understood the word, though he still wasn’t properly remembering. It had been too long.

They both took off after the fox, which let out a barking laugh and disappeared deep into the house. The humans chased, but when they rushed down the two little steps, they didn’t keep running straight, after the fox; they turned instead, going into the only room that Q refused to enter. It reeked of metal and iron and fire, and he hated the way it made his skin prick like he’d fallen into nettles.

They came back out, holding metal — the metal that made explosions and fires — and Q recoiled, wishing his human wouldn’t do that. But they tracked the fox through the house and into a big room near the back, where the door had rotted, leaving a fox-sized escape hole. Together, they left the house, leaving a blood trail that neither one seemed to notice. His human and the other one bumped shoulders with every step. The fear-smell was gone, replaced by the sharper sense that they were hunting.

Hunting. With fire and explosions and metal. Now it was Q’s turn to feel fear, his body humming with it in a way he couldn’t remembering experiencing before.

The fox. _His_ fox.

Q scrambled up the side of the building to launch himself off the roof. The foxes didn’t have words and voices, but they were still his friends. His playmates. And under his protection. He wouldn’t damage his human for one, but he certainly could damage the metal, or at least help the fox escape. Hunting was vile, and Q had no place for it in his peaceful little corner of the world.

The moor disappeared under him as he ran as fast as he could. He couldn’t help a little vindictive swipe at the not-his human as he dashed past them, cutting into his ankles with the less-sharp claws of his feet as he passed.

The human shouted, though the shout was lost in the thunderous discharge of the metal, and if Q had been anything else — anything slower — it would have struck him. As it was, he dove to all fours and ran even faster, faster than humans could ever see, skin tingling and ears burning from the explosion just paces away from where he’d been.

But it didn’t scare off his human. Infuriatingly, his human _stayed_ with the other.

An odd feeling prickled over Q, and he gave himself over to identifying it as he ran towards the poor, desperate fox. The blue-eyed one wasn’t trying to stop the cold-smelling one, but was trying to be _helpful_ , Q realised. That knowledge helped him identify what the odd, prickly feeling was. It was hurt.

Q was hurt. And sad. Because his human wasn’t defending him, or trying to protect him. He’d left an offering for Q. Didn’t he know that Q was _his_?

Q kept his eyes fixed on the ground until he made it to his fox. Choosing action over emotion, Q hefted the poor creature by its ruff and yanked it free from the earth. Just in time, too, apparently — he felt the beast send him a wave of relief and exhaustion that Q ignored in favour of finding the best-hidden foxhold to drop his friend in. The hill revealed itself moments later; Q dropped in the fox and, as soon as the last bit of white tail vanished from his sight, he collapsed the hole to protect him.

Then he looked back, across the dark moor, to where the two humans were standing. Even at a distance of hundreds of paces, he could see them both shivering, half-dressed as they were. And when they turned, retreating back to the house, Q followed.


	3. Chapter 3

“Can they get up here? Whatever they are?”

James shoved at the bedsheet that he’d wadded up under the door. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it was,” he said, though the admission galled him almost as much as the fact that they were _hiding_. Two grown men, and they were hiding from what morning would probably reveal as a half-wild housecat.

Furious at the bad turn of luck, he limped over to his sleeping bag on the floor by the fireplace. They’d taken shelter in the master bedroom on the theory that most critters wouldn’t climb stairs without incentive, and they’d intentionally left all the food downstairs. Of course, since most of their food was in tins, the only things that might get any attention was what James had brought as an offering. And a stupid idea that had been. It was probably his fucking fault that some half-mad creature had followed them into the house in the first place.

He sat down on the floor, wishing the bed didn’t smell quite so mouldy. He wanted a soft mattress and Alec’s laughter and now he was thinking they should just bloody well go back to London and leave Scotland to rot.

After one last check of the window locks, Alec went to his bag of clothes. Then, without a shred of modesty, he dropped his ripped blue jeans and bent over, twisting to look at the back of his leg. He’d been clawed in almost the exact same spot as James, though he didn’t seem to be bleeding.

“You all right?” James asked, turning around on his sleeping bag. Shivering from the cold, he knelt up at the foot and put a hand on Alec’s calf, feeling faint welts raised up over rock-hard muscle and soft gold hair.

Alec nodded. “I don’t think it cut me.”

Tired and cold and not nearly drunk enough to feel good about anything, James indulged, running his fingers down to Alec’s ankle and back up to his knee, cataloguing the different textures of skin. He heard Alec hiss in a breath, though he’d turned away, not meeting James’ eyes.

What little courage remained failed him. He pulled back and dropped onto his stomach, pulling his sleeping bag over himself. He folded his arms on the clothes he’d piled up to use as a pillow and stared into the fire. If he hadn’t been so bloody tired, he would’ve suggested going to find a hotel in town.

Then Alec eased down next to him, and he laughed quietly. “You promised here wouldn’t be boring.”

“ _It_ wouldn’t be boring _here_ ,” James corrected.

Alec reached out with his good hand, fingertips brushing against James’ forearm. The light contact was too deliberate to be accidental, sparking nerves to life, and James shivered.

Tentatively, he moved his arm closer. Alec shifted his fingers, and the tips slid over James’ arm, until Alec’s whole hand rested against suddenly oversensitive skin.

“I’m not bored,” Alec said, choosing his words very carefully. “Not now.”

James turned, looking at the way Alec’s eyes had gone dark. His heartbeat picked up, hard enough that he could feel it in his chest and neck. He was still tired and cold and hurting, and he didn’t give a damn about any of that.

He shoved himself into the two inch gap between their sleeping bags, ignoring the way the motion wrenched at his torn calf, and lifted a hand awkwardly to the back of Alec’s neck. Alec ducked his head and then snarled in pain. James froze, only to have Alec push up onto his elbow, clenching his jaw for a moment as his fingers threaded into James’ hair.

“Turn over,” he said, and James realised Alec couldn’t lie on his back. Not about to argue, James squirmed over, kicking at the sleeping bag that slipped against the floorboards. Alec tried to help but mostly got in his way, but somehow they both ended up on Alec’s sleeping bag, with James trapped between the cold sleeping bag and Alec’s warm skin.

Their first kiss was tentative and awkward, noses bumping as they felt their way hesitantly through a minefield of expectations and potential misunderstandings. James finally told himself that this was really happening — that neither of them was pulling back in disgust and indignation — and Alec must have come to the same conclusion, because he pulled back only long enough to meet James’ eyes before he kissed again, this time without any hesitation at all. This kiss stole James’ breath, full of desire so fierce it was almost painful, and when Alec pushed his hips insistently forward, it was easy for James to brace his good leg and thrust up.

Alec groaned, the soft sound lost under his exhale and the crack of the fire. James pressed closer, chasing Alec’s tongue, and nipped at his mouth until he parted his lips. When Alec’s hand fisted in James’ hair, sparks flew down his spine.

“Fuck,” James whispered, letting his head fall back so Alec could kiss at his throat.

Alec hesitated, cheek pressed against James’ jaw. “Is this — Should I stop?”

“No. God, no,” James said, reaching up to wrap his arms around Alec’s body before he remembered the bite. Instead, he put his hand on Alec’s nape and pulled him back down into another kiss, silencing Alec’s gasp of breath. He drew up his good leg, put his foot flat on the floor beside the sleeping bag, and pushed his hips up again, wishing he’d thought to get rid of his pants — wishing they both had, in fact. Alec’s stomach was flat and hard. He wanted to see the hollow of Alec’s hip — the sharp, downward angle of flesh between his hipbone and hair that was probably a shade darker than the sun-bleached hair that James had carefully washed with the last of their vodka, to clean the scalp wound that had bled sluggishly for almost half an hour.

Amidst a torrent of soft Russian, Alec whispered, “James.” He kissed and licked and rutted against James’ hip, and James thrust back, breath coming in panting little gasps. Everything fell away, from the burning throb of his calf to his worry that some diseased, half-mad animal was hunting them. Alec’s body was hard and hot and gorgeous against his own, and he wrapped his good leg around Alec’s to bring their bodies closer and tighter together.

He almost didn’t want it to end, but he needed release. After everything, he _needed_ this pleasure that he chased as relentlessly as he’d ever gone after anything in his life.

But Alec got there first, bucking hard against James’ body, hand going tight in his hair. He pulled back from their kiss and gasped in breaths between soft Russian words. The damp warmth that spread between them, trapped by the pants they were still wearing, turned the heat low in James’ gut into fire, and he pushed up with all his strength, needing more.

Then Alec worked a hand between their bodies, under the waistband of James’ pants, and the first touch of his fingers sent James flying. He bit his own lip to keep from crying out as the pleasure ripped through him. Gasping, he let his head fall back, eyes closing for long, blissful seconds.

As it ebbed, Alec pressed kisses to his face, his jaw, his throat, the whole time murmuring in quiet Russian. James felt like he should say or do something, but he was too exhausted. The day’s stress and anxiety and pain melted away under the knowledge that Alec wanted him — that they _both_ wanted this. And now, he wanted nothing more than to sleep for about a week, wake up when he was rested, and then have a proper go at Alec when they were both sober and awake and no longer under attack from Scotland’s maddest wildlife.

The thought made him laugh, and Alec murmured in his ear, “What’s so funny?”

“How this all —” James began, opening his eyes, only to find himself staring into lambent green eyes bare inches away, peering out from the darkness under the bed.

He let out a shout and threw himself back, dragging Alec with him. Alec’s own shout was pained; he scrambled back, cradling his arm to his chest, staring at James in momentary confusion and anger. Then James snatched up his shotgun, twisting to aim under the bed, and Alec stopped swearing as he grabbed his gun.

 _“Shto? Shto eto?”_ Alec demanded in Russian. James understood: _What? What is it?_

Breath coming in heavy gasps, heart pounding, James lowered himself to look down the barrel of the shotgun, though he saw nothing now. Nothing but darkness.

“Eyes,” he said quietly. “Something was under there. Something’s in here with us.”

 

~~~

 

Q was in trouble and confused and hurt. He flitted from shadow to shadow too fast for a human to follow, desperately trying — and failing — to find a way out. The room was effectively sealed, and no matter how hard he dived at the door or the glass of the windows, he couldn’t get out.

He didn’t entirely know what to make of what just happened. At first, he’d hid under the bed to see if they were finally going to get comfortable enough to play a game. Q liked games, and there was a fire in the room. There was so much fun to be had with fire, if the humans had the right temperament for it. But then they’d started doing something _else_ , and it only took a moment for Q to realise it wasn’t a game. It was touching. But more than touching. And the shouting — Q had been ready to come to his human’s aid to rescue him from how the other one had him trapped, until the smell hit him. They were mating.

It was fascinating, really. Q watched his human lose himself in pleasure, and it made him want to consider forgiving the grass-eyed one. Then he’d _laughed_. Q couldn’t help it — he wanted more. Wanted to see the laugh, feel it, watch his human’s expression be transformed by it. There were few things in this world that were as intoxicating as laughter, and Q had let his defences drop as he inched forward, desperate to see more.

Then more shouting, and the toxic metal. This time it wasn’t the grass-eyed one. It was _his_ human. Wanting to hurt him.

Q kicked frantically at the glass. He desperately, desperately wanted out. Glass — door — even the fireplace. All were barred to him. He flashed from one shadow to the next as the humans shouted, and the shadows became small and faint from the lamp that the grass-eyed one lifted, until Q was trapped in a high corner, digging into the ceiling, making himself as small as possible. He closed his eyes and tried to _not be_ , hoping that they would stop searching for him. That they’d put out the lamp and let the fire die down, and then he could find a way to escape.

 

~~~

 

Two minutes of frantic, aimless searching, fuelled by panic and the adrenaline rush. Two minutes that felt like a lifetime, leaving James dizzy in the aftermath, when nothing else came at them.

“Are you —”

“I’m sure,” James cut in, feeling like an arse all the same. “I know what I saw!”

Alec stepped back, touching James at hip and shoulder, guarding his back. Something inside James eased, tension unknotting. “We didn’t clean the room.”

“Clear,” James corrected automatically, almost buckling with relief at Alec’s logic. Nothing had got in. Something had _been_ here, probably something nesting or just waking after winter’s hibernation, if anything in Scotland hibernated. “Something was here before.”

“Right.” Alec shifted, and James felt a touch on his hip. He looked back and met Alec’s eyes over his shoulder. “We move to another room. We clear it. Then we can sleep — or not?”

“Fucking genius,” James breathed, too tired to care about being embarrassed that _he_ hadn’t thought of that.

The master bedroom was tucked into the corner of the first floor, above the dining room. It was close to the kitchen’s heat but far enough away that noise and odours wouldn’t disturb the master of the house. Across the hall, over the kitchen, was the nursery, long since abandoned. Farther down was James’ old room.

Carefully remaining on their guard, they gathered their sleeping bags and clothes and bags. James prodded at the fire, disrupting the logs, hoping they would burn out quickly. Then, on impulse, he threw open the windows, hoping that whatever was trapped in here would get the hell out.

Out in the hallway, he saw Alec at the door to the nursery. “Not that one,” he said as Alec pushed open the door. “My room —”

“What the fucking shit?” Alec asked, lifting the lantern to shine into the nursery.

Shivering in the draughty house, James rushed to his side. Then he dropped the bag and stared into what had once been the nursery. “I...”

James had a vague memory of the room being used for furniture. Now, though, the furniture had been smashed and flattened into a carpet of fragmented wood almost completely buried by a thick layer of crunchy brown grasses. Dried flowers were everywhere, adding a dusty, sweet odour. Alec stepped inside, though he stopped before getting his bare feet too near the splinters scattered along the edge of what was clearly a nest.

But a nest for _what_? Some sort of insane magpie. That was the only answer that came to James’ mind. Magpies collected shiny trinkets from humans. So did ravens. So what was this? A giant raven?

The treasures here were not just scattered in piles but _arranged_ , with purpose and intent. Cracked, empty glass bottles were arranged in a wavering line, gathered by colour — browns and tans and sea green and old gold. Pieces of mirror were laid carefully in a corner, interspersed with tiny bits of broken jewellery, gold chains and small precious stones. Feathers were stuck into the straw not where they’d fallen but in a teetering, upright line, each one from a different bird. In the corner hidden by the door, there was a geometric mosaic of river stones, not mortared or glued in place but pushed and fitted carefully together.

“Not an animal,” James whispered, fear rising up inside him. This wasn’t an animal. This was _human_. This was some mad, feral _person_ who was living in his house.

Language was no barrier to Alec’s sharp mind. He caught James’ meaning at once, throwing a nervous look his way. “We can find him.”

James started to nod, but then he caught himself. “Not tonight.” His hand tightened around his shotgun. He should have felt ridiculous, standing in his childhood house in nothing but sticky pants, freezing his arse off, but he didn’t. He felt nothing but determination, the need to reclaim what was his. To take back Skyfall from whoever thought it abandoned.

“Tomorrow?” Alec asked.

James nodded, glad that Alec was with him — not because he wanted Alec, but because they were stronger together. “During daylight.”

 

~~~

 

Q sat on the roof, staring up at the stars. This was all going very, very badly. The early evening’s potential for fun, for play, for touch, for _companionship_ had all vanished completely in the wake of sadness and the slightest bit of horror.

Not only did his human have an awful friend who hurt him; he didn’t seem to want Q’s help at all. Even worse, he seemed to want to hurt Q. If Q hadn’t vanished from under the bed just in the nick of time, he was certain he would have been caught by the metal weapon’s deadly fire. And then, the last straw: They’d found his home. His nest. And instead of being excited or curious about the shapes and colours Q had gone through such pains to create, they were angry.

The starlight was calming, but not calming enough — he flickered through one emotion after the other until he finally settled on a plan. The humans in Q’s memories weren’t bad; he’d enjoyed their company very much. And this one was of the same blood; it was reasonable to expect he’d act just the same. It must have been the other one, the one that smelled cold. He must have been a bad influence on Q’s human, to make him act so unfriendly.

Q would just have to get rid of him. That would solve the problem. The grass-eyed one had to go away and leave Q and his human alone. There were a lot of ways Q could approach that problem; he could use fire, claws, teeth, even the local animals.

But first, something had to be done about the metal and fire things. Q did not like them at all; there weren’t many ways something like him could be hurt, but those things would certainly do it. They had to go. First the ones in the room that Q hated. Then the ones by the humans’ nest.

With a sharp, dark laugh, Q slid down the rooftop, clinging to the brick to gaze inside the room the humans had chosen. It was next to _his_ place, only they’d emptied everything. They’d smashed furniture and pushed it out onto the ledge that looked down below, with the shaky railing that wouldn’t hold even Q’s slight weight. They’d built a fire in here, too, roaring and bright with gold and red, and they had the fire-lamp and more lights, metal lights, that they used to search every last corner. Q was darkness against the shadowy night, though, and they never saw him watching through the glass.

Finally, they rebuilt their nest on the floor by the fireplace, and they got into their blankets together. The metal weapons, they kept close by, as if they couldn’t feel the sharp, stinging pain against their skin, carried to their tongues with every breath. And then, anger drove away thoughts of how _dull_ humans were, because _his_ human was in the other one’s arms again, and they petted and touched with hands and mouths and bodies, wrapped up in their blankets, blond heads intimately close together.

The last bit of well-being drained from Q. For the first time in years, he’d had an offering, and it was _nothing_ compared to this. What was the memory of sweet honey and rich cream when he hid in the shadows, watching _his_ human do _this_ with the one who wanted Q destroyed?

At least they were distracted, Q thought bitterly. He pulled away from the window to crawl alongside the house until he came back to the open windows of the big room where he’d hidden under the nest. Staying in the shadows and along the roof, Q made his way silently to the weapons room. His eyes sparked with disappointment and anger, and he knew it wouldn’t take much for him to transfer that volatility to something... ignitable.

When he made it to the weapons room, Q hovered outside the door uncertainly. He didn’t want to go in, but the things that burned were too well hidden by metal and man-made materials to easily catch fire. Perhaps it should start in the middle of the room with a brush pile and burn out from there, he thought, looking around speculatively. The flames would be stronger and less likely to burn out if he did it that way.

It would take time to drag the sticks in that he’d need if he kept to his small size, but that was fine. It gave him something to do in protest of his mistreatment at the humans’ hands. Besides which, Q was immortal. He had nothing _but_ time.


	4. Chapter 4

James stared at a neat, deliberate pile of wood — twigs, actually, and the smallest of branches. It was barely ankle-high, perhaps a foot wide. And it hadn’t been there last night.

“What the _fuck_?” he asked, fear slithering through him like icy oil, leaving a nauseous chill in its wake. “Is this fucking real? Alec?”

Instead of mocking him, Alec crouched down and warily touched the twigs. “It feels real,” he acknowledged tightly. He rose, rubbing his hand over the scabs forming on his scalp where the thing — person, animal, whatever the _fuck_ — had clawed him.

“Why?” James asked, hoping against hope that Alec actually had some fucking clue.

But Alec just shook his head, looking a bit lost. “Why? _Who?_ ” he countered pointedly.

Cradling the shotgun against his chest, James pressed a hand to his eyes. His sleep had been restless, and though fear had driven away the vodka’s pleasant haze, the hangover had struck in full force. They’d both had a perfunctory wash in the pump room off the kitchen earlier, but neither of them felt comfortable filling the copper water heater enough to supply the tub for a bath.

“We need intel,” he said, falling back on his very sketchy training. Not that he hadn’t paid attention in some of his classes — the important ones, at least. It was just he’d been training to go into the bloody Royal Navy as an officer, not to hunt insane people or animals in his childhood home.

“We need more vodka,” Alec said, much more practically.

With that, James couldn’t argue.

 

~~~

 

The village was an hour away, a thirty-mile-per crawl over roads that twisted back on themselves and looped in huge S-curves around earth too wet to pave. Before everything had gone to shit, James had planned on suggesting a walk straight across the moors to the village, bypassing the road altogether. Now, he was just as happy to drive, despite the cost of petrol, his dwindling supply of cash, and the potential damage to the car’s suspension.

Alec insisted on a hot breakfast at the village bakery, where he charmed the old woman at the counter into selling them not just fresh buns but full plates, especially once she learned that there was ‘a Bond, back at Skyfall Lodge, imagine that!’ Thinking that if they were smart, they’d head south out of the village and keep going, James kept his mouth shut until breakfast was ready.

But eggs, sausage, beans, toast, and sticky buns went a long way towards bolstering his spirits, and what had filled him with bleak despair before now just left him determined. And more importantly, breakfast inspired him to a plan.

After a stop at the store to pick up plasters and iodine, James drove not to Skyfall Lodge but the next property down the road — a much more modest cottage surrounded by pasture land. Alec followed James up to the door, which was answered by an older woman with dark hair shot with grey and a generously curved figure. Fresh earth was crusted under her nails, and she was wearing an apron over her hips. The pockets were stuffed with gardening tools. Over her jumper, she wore a necklace that featured a twin pair of golden spirals, parallel and identical and fused together perfectly.

“Good Lord, is that you, James?” Patricia asked, staring up at him.

He smiled, feeling ten years old again. “Yes, ma’am. I’m —” was as far as he got before she pulled him into a crushing embrace, and then there was nothing for it but to allow her to bustle them both into the house. For all that she was approaching sixty, she was a whirlwind of energy, and had them parked at her lovingly polished kitchen table with tea, scones, and clotted cream before she’d let them speak another word.

Before she could start asking about every single event in James’ life over the last decade or so, James asked, “Have you seen anyone at the Lodge? Anyone trespassing?”

“No,” she said unhesitatingly. “It’s been very quiet up here. I go over there once a season, with Kincaid. Check the pipes and the window glass. We’re keeping it good for you, for when you come back home.” James took a sip of tea to hide his wince.

Alec spoke up, asking, “Have you seen upstairs?”

“Mmm, no, not in recent years. I don’t do stairs very well anymore. What _is_ your accent?” she asked curiously.

“He’s Russian,” James answered briefly. “Someone’s been upstairs at the Lodge, ma’am. Someone... _not right_.”

“Not right?” She sat up a bit straighter, holding her teacup in both hands. “Not right how?”

James glanced at Alec, wondering how the hell to explain and not come off sounding mad. “They’ve made a... nest —”

“Like a bird, only larger,” Alec said, gesturing to the kitchen table, indicating the size of the nest. “A _voron_. A black bird?”

“A raven,” James explained, nodding. “The old nursery furniture’s been smashed and covered with old grass and flowers. And there are... things. Someone’s collecting things.”

“What things?” she asked, frowning suspiciously.

Wishing he’d thought to bring along samples as proof, he said, “Feathers. Pieces of glass. Pebbles. It’s...”

“The collection of a child,” Alec supplied. “The stones were arranged like art.”

To James’ surprise, Patricia’s ruddy, wind-chapped face went pale. “Oh. Are you _certain_?”

They both nodded. “Who is it?” Alec asked. “Did someone escape from... _psikhiatricheskuyu bol’nitsu_?”

James stared at him, wondering what the hell _that_ meant.

Alec gestured. “For people. Mad people.”

“An asylum. I don’t even think there _is_ one around here,” James said, looking to Patricia.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she scolded. “You don’t have a madman there.”

“Then who?” James asked, a sharp edge coming into his voice. He didn’t love Skyfall, necessarily, but dammit all, it was _his_. “Who’s in my house?”

“Not who, dear. _What_.”

 

~~~

 

It was almost sundown by the time their second trip to town was complete. James dry-swallowed three aspirin and passed the bottle to Alec, who took some and stared stoically out the windscreen, avoiding James’ eyes.

“Are _we_ mad?” he finally asked as he capped the bottle and offered it back.

James took a deep breath. He wanted a drink and a cigarette. He wanted to be exhausted from a good day walking the moors and shooting. He wanted to be inside, in front of a fire, eating crisply roasted fresh grouse and drinking beer. He wanted his worst problem in the world to be how to coax Alec into his bed.

“Think so,” he finally said, looking over at Alec.

Slowly, Alec nodded. “All right,” he said with a stoic shrug.

They got out of the car, and James reached into the back to take out the bag. With the exception of his emergency money, stashed behind his military ID card, he was now officially broke until payday. And the emergency money had to go towards petrol, or they’d be pushing the car back to London.

This really was insane, but there was no actual _sane_ explanation. Oh, it was remotely possible that they’d been attacked by separate animals — first on the moor, then in the study, finally in the master bedroom. But the nest... the nest with its sorted collections that implied _intellect_... That was no animal’s nest.

So they trudged forward into madness in silence, all the way to the lightning-struck stump. Bond wasn’t surprised to see last night’s offerings were gone, down to the last crumb. He told himself that it was birds and foxes and mice and insects, but he knew better.

He set down the grocery bag and looked at Alec. He was tense, fingers twitching, and he kept turning as if trying to see in all directions at once. But he wasn’t snickering under his breath or eyeing Bond disdainfully, so Bond ignored his misgivings and took the cream out of the bag. He opened the container and poured the contents into the bowl, knowing that it was clean. It had been licked clean.

This was _insane_.

“How long?” Alec asked, running a finger over the smooth, flat shelf formed by the broken-off branch.

“Years,” James said, taking out the box of honey and whisky cakes. They were a favourite of his, and he was tempted to hold one back, but Patricia had been adamant: They needed to appease the fae that was hunting them. Supposedly, it would know if he gave any less than he could afford.

This wasn’t just insane. This was stupid. It was _ridiculous_. This wasn’t the Middle Ages, no matter how it felt like Skyfall Lodge was stuck there, without central heat or properly reliable water and electric. He was barely surviving on his military pay, and what had last night been a quaint family tradition — a way to honour his dead father — was suddenly the best way to stop some monster from attacking him and Alec?

Worse, was Alec just humouring him? Playing along for the sake of an amusing holiday? Would Alec tell everyone the moment they returned to London, perhaps in hopes of taking James’ spot as one of the more popular officers, leaving James the outcast instead?

No.

 _No_. Alec wouldn’t do that. Besides, he’d been bled worse by this fucking _whatever_. If anything, Alec would want vengeance on it.

Alec said nothing as James opened a jar of honey and set the whole thing next to the cakes. James hadn’t been able to afford cheese, but he’d spent his last few coins on candy bars, on the assumption that they were sweets, too, even if they weren’t traditional. After a moment’s debate, he unwrapped them and set them on the branch next to the jar of honey.

Then he shoved the wrappers back into the bag and looked at Alec. “Ready?”

Alec nodded. “Ready,” he said, and fell in beside James, close enough that their arms brushed, as they walked back to the lodge.

 

~~~

 

Q was tired, but it was the sort of satisfied exhaustion that came from making progress in hard work. He’d been tirelessly and single-mindedly taking sticks back and forth to the weapons room since the sun had gone down, freeing to leave the safety of his underground den. The old fox’s den wasn’t as comfortable as his nest in the big house, but it was safe from daylight and the curious eyes of the humans.

His path took him past the offering tree, though Q wasn’t going to consciously dwell on the reason for that. He didn’t look at it, didn’t touch, but drifted past in a state of dejected annoyance. Every time he caught himself thinking that there had been such promise only this time yesterday, he’d stop, stomp on the ground until the beetles and ants were running from his temper, and his thoughts would clear again.

But something was different this time. Q tried not to let himself be distracted by the scent of milk and honey and sweet things, but he didn’t last a heartbeat past identifying a new offering before he was once again cautiously approaching the stump.

Not that he would allow himself to saunter up and take. It was nearly physically painful, the act of holding himself back — almost as painful as the thought that his human and the disastrous _other_ could be hiding somewhere with their weapons, waiting for him to take the bait.

Q was careful, but he was also inexorably drawn in. He approached the stump in a circuitous fashion, scanning every bit of brush and grass and earth for evidence of a trap. A trap that wasn’t there.

Finally, heart beating fast in his chest, Q was standing at the base of the stump and looking up. He used his nails to climb steadily over, freezing when his eyes were at bowl-level. When no explosion rang out, when no net came crashing down, he slithered onto the top of the stump and sat cross-legged in the middle.

More cream. More honey. Cakes and confections that were the best things Q had _ever_ tasted. He was torn between wanting to share the glorious flavours with his woodland friends and hoarding them all to himself. In the end he managed to do both — he didn’t leave the stump, but did offer bits and pieces to his passing friends as they made appearances. Soon he was surrounded by foxes and mice and owls and weasels, all crowding for small bits of treat that Q was happy to share.

When the food was gone and Q was too full and content to move, he shifted so he could turn towards the house and its confusing occupants. They left him offerings, then tried to damage him, then left him offerings again?

Q cast a look back to the moor, seeking just the sorts of tinder that would be perfect for his pile. But he hesitated, wondering if he should give the humans another chance. The memory of games and touch, and the much more recent memory of laughter, were all far, far too tempting to simply shove aside. The slow-simmering burn of hurt and anger, though, made it difficult.

Finally, with a sigh, Q dismounted and darted out to pick up a new stick. He flitted back to the house, but stopped just outside the weapons room door, stick in hand.

Maybe...

Maybe just a peek.

Stick still in hand, Q slid out the window and headed for the one where the humans were staying.

They were upstairs again, in the same room as last night. And though they weren’t touching skin-to-skin, like last night, they sat close enough to touch. They were talking, looking into each other’s’ eyes, occasionally laughing. With his belly still full from the offerings and the sound of laughter in his ears, Q could understand bits of what they were saying. They talked of water and distant places, of where they would go and how they would be together.

They still had their metal weapons, but not in their hands. Sometimes, they extended their empty hands and touched one another — fingertips to arms or hair or, once, Q’s human touched the other one’s face.

The simmering jealousy that had been working its way through Q’s heart and mind ignited in a flash, and it was all Q could do to not smash the glass and shove his stick in the _other_ one’s eye. He withdrew from the window in a little fit of rage and skittered down the walls and through the crack in the front door to the weapons room. He threw the stick into the tinder pile in a huff, tempted to ignite it for bitter satisfaction’s sake.

But curiosity and the lingering effects of the offering drew him back to the humans’ room’s window. He peered through, watching, looking for any sign that they were waiting to trap him or hurt him. They didn’t do anything more than sit and wait, however, and soon Q was starting to feel bored.

He tapped on the window and ducked out of sight, listening to their exclamations and scrambling. The window rattled, but didn’t open. He heard another quiet laugh — both of them, their voices curiously in harmony — followed by the rustle of unnatural fabric as they returned to the nest they’d made by the fire.

The laughter swept along Q’s body and tingled like the spice of buttercup flowers on his skin. As soon as it faded, Q wanted it back. So he tapped on the window again.

This time, their voices went silent. Then he heard his human — _his_ human, talking to _him_ : “Hello?”

Q froze in shock, practically vibrating with excitement. _His_ human. Talking to _him_. It wasn’t quite a beckoning, but it was close.

Holding his breath, Q climbed the stone wall to the top of the window. Then he turned, positioning himself upside down. Slowly — painfully, excruciatingly slowly — he peered inside.

The humans were sitting together on the floor, though the grass-eyed one looked ready to stand. Q’s human had his leg extended — the leg Q had clawed last night — but he was as alert as the other. They were sitting close, hands touching, searching the darkness. Finally, Q’s human turned to look over his shoulder at the other, saying something soft. The grass-eyed human responded, and Q’s human turned away from the window and leaned close, almost touching.

It was the grass-eyed one who bridged the finger-length between them. Their lips touched, and Q could almost taste their shared breath. He could hear the sudden race of their hearts, responding to that light touch. Q’s human said something else, and the other one laughed. This time, the touch of lips was accompanied by a touch of hands to faces, fingers to hair, intimate and close.

Fascinated and absurdly jealous and curious beyond all measure, Q dropped to the windowsill and pressed his hands against the glass. His nails scraped along the window, causing a slight screech, but Q was too busy waiting to see if they’d laugh when they were done to flinch and hide.

But instead, the scrape of his nails on the glass made them both stop and look his way. They both backed away, and while the grass-eyed one reached a hand towards the metal weapon, Q’s human caught his arm and stopped him.

After a flurry of soft words, the two of them sometimes speaking over each other, Q’s human repeated, “Hello.” Whatever he said after that was lost under the certainty that he really was talking to Q. Looking at him and talking to him.

Q grinned, more pleased than he had felt in ages. Language. He tipped his head, watching his human’s mouth, trying to remember language. He moved his mouth experimentally, without bothering with sound yet, to see if it would please his human.

The other one responded first, speaking not to Q but to his human. Then Q’s human nodded, never looking away from the window. He said something in a quieter voice, speaking again to Q, and lifted both of his hands.

Touch? Was his human offering touch? Q slid a long nail along the bottom of the window, but he couldn’t lift it. He perched again on the sill, not willing to dart around to an open window and risk breaking whatever potential there was here. He tapped his nails on the glass asking, looking at his human plaintively.

His human looked away, to the other one, and they spoke quickly. They both went to rise, only to stop for another brief discussion. Finally, it was Q’s human who stood and went not to the window but to the pile of _things_ they’d brought to the house. He looked away from the window to rifle through, and then lifted something out. It glinted like metal, but not iron, not killing metal. And it had glass and brass, too.

His human brought it to the window, holding it out in one hand. The other human said something, but his human answered softly without looking away.

He reached for the glass.

Suddenly nervous and wary, Q darted away from the window, crawling left along the wall. He couldn’t quite bring himself to hide fully in the shadows, though — the _thing_ glinted beautifully in the firelight, and Q wanted to touch it almost as much as he wanted to touch his human. So he clung to the stone and crouched, half in half out of shadow, peeking at the edge of the sill, and waited to see what would happen.

After Q stopped moving, his human reached for the glass again, manipulating the metal at the bottom. The window creaked open, bringing out the smell of warmth and fire and bodies. His human drew back from the window, watching Q intently. Even though the firelight was behind him, Q could see him clearly. Up close, his eyes were even brighter blue than Q had imagined — a colour Q had never seen but that he thought might be the exact colour of the daytime sky.

Without actually making a conscious decision one way or the other, Q found himself being drawn in. He dropped to the floor and inched forward, forgetting all about the _thing_ and the firelight and the _other_. It all washed away under the captivating force of his human’s eyes. Memory sparked in Q again, and he drifted forward, chasing the snatches of remembrance that were tied to that icy blue.

The other one said a word — a word that Q had heard before, an age ago. A name. The name of someone else with blue eyes.

“Hello,” his human said again, and slowly extended the _thing_. Then, clearly, he said, “For you.”

Q broke his gaze to look down at the bit of shiny. Curiosity warred with caution, and he suddenly realised that he was in a room with two humans who had weapons, and who had just yesterday tried to kill him.

Worry tugged at him, and he stopped moving forward. Perhaps this wasn’t the best place for a meeting. Perhaps he could draw them out into the moonlight, where it was safer. He cast a look down at the hateful metal weapons on the floor and started backing away. No shiny thing was worth being trapped.

Q’s human put out his other hand, speaking quickly to him. He crouched and almost fell, hissing as he bent his hurt leg. The other one got up to help balance him, and the motion spooked Q back out the window.

Then, with another soft call, Q’s human appeared at the window again. He looked around, but he was only human, and he couldn’t see Q in the darkness.

He put the shiny thing on windowsill and backed out of sight.

Q hovered uncertainly at the edge of shadow. The shiny thing was just there, waiting for him, and he didn’t have to actually go inside to investigate. Only thoughts of the window slamming down to crush him kept him from settling there to play. But it was a problem easily solved, Q decided. He darted out to the moor to find a suitably sized rock, but it was too heavy to lift. Frustrated, Q rushed back to window, afraid that his pointless gesture would have meant his human had changed his mind and the shiny thing would be gone. 


	5. Chapter 5

As soon as the — the — the _fae_ disappeared, Alec let out a string of curses that James wished he had the fluency to share. He was more than half convinced he was going mad, because the alternative was... well, _insane_.

But the fae was unmistakably just that, right down to every detail of Patricia’s description. Stick-thin and shadowy, seemingly free of Earth’s gravity or able to leap impossibly long distances. It had no size, either, appearing one moment to be the size of a man, the next no longer than a handspan. It could cling to the smoothest wall or find easy purchase atop the narrowest crevice.

No, James corrected himself, thinking of the lithe, inhuman form. Not ‘it’. ‘He’. There was something definitively masculine about the creature.

“That was real,” Alec said accusingly. His hand rested on James’ shoulder, fingers digging in hard as though he were trying to anchor himself in reality. “Was that real? How the _fuck_ could that be real?”

“It was real,” James said, and let out a nervous little laugh. He wanted a drink. He wanted several drinks. He just couldn’t move to actually reach for the beers that were all they had left. Not that it would do any good. Beer definitely wasn’t strong enough for _this_.

“Fucking buggering shit,” Alec said, leaning closer to James to look out the window. “What the _fuck_ were you doing, getting close to it?”

“Him,” James corrected, leaning into Alec’s hand. He reached up to touch, and their fingers laced together. “It’s a ‘him’.

“Were you _looking_?”

James barked out a laugh that was more nervous than amused. “I couldn’t see a bloody thing. Every time he went still, he disappeared —”

“It — _he_ moved too bloody fast,” Alec complained.

James nodded. “He didn’t feel _female_ , though. Then again, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

“The KGB experimented with” — Alec paused, thinking — “drugs to see things?”

“Hallucinogens?” James shook his head. “We’re not. We’re fine.”

“We’re fine. We’re _fine_? How is this ‘fine’?” Alec asked. Then he dropped his hand to James’ wrist, holding him tightly but with care, not pressing hard enough to bruise. “And what was that, you giving him your watch?”

“It’s broken,” James admitted, a little embarrassed. It was the only watch he owned.

“He _bit_ me. He clawed us both. He’s... in the wild?”

“Feral? Untamed?”

Alec made an impatient gesture and then caught James’ fingers in his. “Be more careful. I’m not fast enough to shoot him.”

James flinched at the thought, and he looked back at where the watch lay untouched on the window. “He won’t attack us. We did everything we were supposed to do.”

Then Alec moved behind him and wrapped an arm around his chest, pulling him close. “Good. Maybe he’ll take the watch and leave us alone. I want a night with you _without_ bleeding.”

James closed his eyes, liking that thought, though not as much as he might have before. As much as he wanted Alec, he couldn’t help but be curious about this creature that wasn’t supposed to exist.

 

~~~

 

The shiny thing was still there when Q got back, and he felt a wave of relief that helped bolster his courage. He darted inside before he could change his mind and leaped around the room, startling the humans, who’d sat back down on the floor. They ducked and twisted to try and watch him, but he was too fast, and the grass-eyed one’s injuries made him slow.

Q spotted a log, perfectly-sized to block the window, next to the fire. He clung to the wall long enough to look into his human’s eyes and point at the log. When his human looked at it, Q darted back outside. His human looked back into the now-empty corner. The other one said something, and Q’s human looked at the window, where Q pointed at the sill.

This time, Q’s human laughed, rich and low, sparking through Q. The other one laughed, too, and after a moment’s conversation, Q’s human picked up the log and, with the grass-eyed one’s help, stood up so he could bring the log to the windowsill.

His human carefully balanced the log on the windowsill beside the watch. It took a bit of work, but he finally got it settled so it wouldn’t fall. Then he backed away and sat back down on the blankets. The other one touched Q’s human on the shoulder, and Q’s human leaned into the touch.

Q glared down at the shiny thing, not daring to let his jealousy take over. If it did, he’d dive in to bite the grass-eyed one, potential for traps or being hurt with weapons forgotten in the rush of the victory he’d surely feel. But then his human might get angry. That wouldn’t be any fun.

So Q settled on his knees to look at the thing. It was cold under his touch, and made a delightful bell-like sound when he hit it with his nail. There were etchings in the metal, but Q didn’t care much for the design — it was asymmetrical and ugly. So he focused on the next best thing — taking it apart to find out what was inside.

The back popped off easily, and Q gasped in amazement at what he found. Shiny, toothed circles that were clearly meant to interact with each other. Delighted, Q hooked a nail in one of the gaps and pulled, watching with fascination as the gears turned. He looked up at his human, grinning with joy.

“Good?” was the only word Q understood out of his human’s whole speech, but it was enough.

Q nodded, mouthing the word back. Then he tapped the thing and looked back up, trying to project curiosity. The thing must have a name. He picked up the back and held it up, raising his brows, hoping his human would understand.

After a moment’s discussion, his human said, “Watch. It’s a watch.” The grass-eyed one said something, and Q’s human reached up to touch the hand still resting on his shoulder.

That was a word worth trying his hand at repeating. “Watch,” he said quietly, grinning down at the back. He set it down and sat again next to the rest of it. “Watch, watch, watch,” he repeated, very much enjoying the sound of language on his tongue. He pulled out the topmost circle. “Watch.”

Then his human let go of the grass-eyed one’s hand and touched his own chest. “James.” He moved aside and touched the other human, saying, “Alec.” Then he pointed at Q.

Q stared at his human. The name sparked Q’s memories again, and he frowned. He pointed. “James,” he repeated. “Bond.” He looked at ‘Alec’. “Other,” he spat with annoyance.

That sparked another rush of conversation between the two. Then Q’s human touched himself again, and said, “Yes. I’m James Bond.” Deliberately, he moved his hand to the other one. “Alec. Alec Trevelyan. My friend. My closest friend.” He kept talking, but what stuck in Q’s understanding was the way he said, _“My.”_

He frowned again, staring between James and the other. “My,” he repeated softly, but it wasn’t right. When the thought was turned around, it needed new language. He searched his memory for the appropriate word. “Yours?” he finally said, looking at the other. “Bond’s.” The name of the inhabitants of this building — his friends for generations. Q tapped on his own chest, looking into ice blue. “Yours.”

The other leaned close to James and said something that made them both laugh. James’ answer was low and warm and intimate. He turned to Q and deliberately touched the other. “My friend,” he said. Then he held out his hand to Q. “Are you also my friend?”

 _Friend_. It was a nice word, but Q was certain he was confused. His other human friends had never treated him the way James had treated the other... with touches and intimacy. “Yours,” he repeated absently, looking back down at the watch. He set the top circle aside, then carefully started pulling out the rest. “Watch,” he repeated, letting it roll off his tongue. “Watchhh...”

 

~~~

 

“Be glad he misheard you.”

James could only look away from the fae for an instant. “What?”

“Misheard? Your words — what you said.”

“What the _hell_?” he asked, looking away from the fascinating sight of the little creature dismantling his watch.

Alec grinned at him. “You asked him to be your ‘friend’. Like I’m your ‘friend’,” he said, and slid his hand possessively over James’ hip.

“Oh, fucking hell,” James said, shooting an alarmed look at the distracted fae. Then he elbowed Alec — gently, wary of his wounds. “He’s what, barely a foot tall?”

“I don’t want to share,” Alec said quietly, still grinning.

James shivered, relaxing back against Alec. Now that the danger seemed to have passed, James was coming to realise just how close he and Alec were — and that there hadn’t been any sort of morning-after crisis. More to the point, there would be _another_ morning-after, once they had a bit of privacy tonight.

“Not a problem,” James promised, though he couldn’t help but think that once they got back to London, it might well be worth sharing, if they could find someone — a woman, preferably — who was interested. _That_ thought was distracting enough that he had to shift a bit to get comfortable on the floor.

The fae was putting components back into the watch, apparently all in the right order, since everything seemed to fit. James wanted to get up and go over to him, but his leg hurt and he was comfortably pressed close to Alec.

Instead, he gently called, “Oi. Little one.”

The fae looked up with the same expression he’d worn every time James spoke directly to him — a mix of delight and awe. “Little one,” he repeated thoughtfully.

The creature’s smile was engaging. James smiled back and nodded encouragingly. “Do you have a name? I’m James” — he gestured to Alec — “and he’s Alec.” He pointed at the fae. “And you are...”

The creature sighed, tapping a long nail on the watch. “Watch.” He pointed to James. “Bond.” He glared at Alec. “Other.” Then he laughed, a low, breathy sound. “Little one.”

“That’s not a name,” Alec protested. “Is that a name? In English?”

“Not unless you’re a racehorse or show dog,” James said, grinning. He pointed at Alec again and explained, “This is _Alec_ , not ‘other’. My friend. Mine, little one. Can you understand that?”

“Mine. Yours.” The fae glared at Alec and then down at the weapons. Something shifted in his face and he started packing the gears back in the watch much faster. “Go.”

Understanding hit, and James put his hand on the rifle. The fae’s head snapped up, and he went so still that he seemed to disappear, blending in with the night. Alec’s hand tightened against James’ hip, and he flinched in surprise when James shoved the rifle away, across the room, out of reach.

“Alec,” James prompted, looking at the darkness where he hoped the fae still was. “Disarm.”

Alec didn’t move right away. “Do you always do such stupid things?”

James looked at him. “Do you always ask —”

“Stupid questions,” Alec finished with a sigh. “If it eats us, I’ll be a _prizrak_ to follow you.”

“If I understood that, I could tell you if I was flattered or worried.”

Alec huffed and twisted. When he touched his rifle, the watch dropped to the floor from where it had hung, seemingly suspended in the darkness. After a moment, Alec shoved the rifle away.

“Come back,” James called without moving. If he had to, he’d get up and move the watch back to the windowsill. If the fae was right outside, though, he didn’t want to spook him. “It’s safe.”

Several long moments passed; then the fae flickered back into vision, looking tentative and worried. He stared after the rifles from his vantage point at the window, then dropped to the floor with a careful little hop. He didn’t walk towards the rifles he was so viciously staring after, however. He went for the watch.

“Easily scared, isn’t he?” Alec murmured.

“Just stay still. He won’t hurt us,” James said more confidently. “He’s feral, that’s all.”

“No more biting,” Alec insisted. Then his hand returned to James’ hip. “Not him, anyway.”

James laughed and held out a hand to the fae. “See? Friends. We’re not going to hurt you, little one.”

The fae tapped his long nail on the watch several times, staring at them both. Then he darted forward, too quick to follow, until it was perched on the top of Bond’s outstretched foot. He looked down at James’ wound, frowning. “Touch,” he said, gesturing.

Alec tensed, sitting up a bit. “Does he want to cut you again or fix it?” he asked warily.

“No idea,” James admitted. He swallowed, aware of just how vulnerable he was. If the fae wanted to attack, there was no possible way either of them could react quickly enough to stop the little creature. “I need more details, little one.”

“Fragile,” the creature said with a sigh. “S’ree.” He held up his hand, sharply-nailed fingers waving in the air, then pointed at James. “Fragile,” he said again accusingly.

“Of all the bloody things I’ve ever been called, ‘fragile’ has never been one,” James said with a laugh, causing the fae to perk up and stare at his mouth. “S’ree? See?”

“Or sorry,” Alec ventured.

“Sorry?” James asked the fae. “I can forgive you, but you can’t hurt us again. No more hurting anyone. You’re safe with us.”

The fae’s gaze darted back and forth between Alec and James again before he focused on James’ mouth. He inched forward and pointed at James. “Again.”

“Again? Which part?” James asked, trying to remember what he’d said. Relief that this wasn’t going to end in bloodshed had him relaxed, and that meant Alec had him distracted — and that was without the surreal nature of talking to a creature that hadn’t existed, at least as far as James was concerned, not an hour ago. “Sorry? Or you’re safe with us?”

The fae shook his head and picked up the watch, cradling it to his chest. He inched forward again, moving slowly, walking up James’ leg. “Bond,” he repeated quietly, staring.

Holding very, very still, James nodded. “Yes. James Bond.” And then, because the creature seemed to understand him, even if its vocabulary was limited, he added, “This is Skyfall Lodge. My home.”

The creature got as far as his thigh before he stopped. He was a negligible weight, barely there. If Bond had been asleep, he never would have awakened. The creature reached up, moving slower than James had seen it move yet, to touch a fingertip to James’ mouth. “Again.”

Alec was nearly vibrating with tension, ready to defend James if necessary. Carefully, James covered Alec’s hand with his own, trying to silently reassure him. “James Bond,” he said. “Skyfall Lodge. This is my home.”

The creature huffed and crouched, staring at James. Then he tapped his own chest. “Q.”

“Q?” James asked.

“Is that a name?” Alec murmured, still tense.

James shrugged slightly. “Your name is Q?” he asked the fae.

The creature stared at him thoughtfully again, fingertip tapping at James’ mouth. Then it withdrew and, for no discernible reason whatsoever, rolled his eyes, tugged at the corners of his mouth, and stuck out his tongue.

The fae was making a silly face at him.

James laughed, glancing at Alec, who was snickering under his breath. “Maybe we’ve both gone mad,” Alec suggested, leaning companionably against James’ shoulder.

The fae made a delighted noise and quickly pressed both hands against James, one to his mouth and one to his throat. “Again,” he demanded with a grin.

“Again — you want me to laugh?” James asked. Experimentally, he laughed, though it came out a bit forced.

“What was the word? Hallucination?” Alec asked.

This time, James’ laugh was a bit more authentic. “We’re not,” he assured Alec.

When the last of the sound and vibration had faded from James’ throat, the fae made a small sound of dissatisfaction, and pulled away. He picked up the watch from where it had fallen in James’ lap.

“Goodbye,” it said after moment, smiling softly.

James put out his hand and smiled. “Goodbye, Q. Come back any time.”

Q solemnly took the fingertip of James’ hand and shook it, tiny hand wrapped around Bond’s comparatively massive finger.

“Alec?” James asked, not looking away from the shadowy fae.

“Probably not safe. I don’t think he likes me,” Alec said, not moving his hand from James’ hip. “ _Spokoynoy nochi_ , Q,” he added to the fae.

Q looked up and blinked at Alec. The fae frowned. Then, in a blur, he ran off James’ leg and presumably out the window. He and the watch vanished.

James let out a shaky breath and looked back at Alec. “If... If he doesn’t come back the rest of the time we’re here... this never happened. Agreed?”

“Maybe.” Alec moved his hand from James’ waist to circle his body, pulling James back against his chest. “How much ‘this’ never happened?”

Relieved that Alec didn’t hate him for this new madness — coming to Skyfall for holiday had been his idea, after all — James leaned back and said, “The fae. Only Q. This — _us_... This happened. And hopefully will again.”

Alec laughed and lowered his head, stubbled cheek rasping against Bond’s. “Only if you lock the bloody window.”


	6. Chapter 6

Q looked down at the watch in a state of ecstatic triumph. It had taken him ages to figure out, but he had _finally_ figured out that not only was the watch broken, it could be fixed.

Q liked order. He liked finding patterns. Patterns could be found in nature everywhere, if one had the patience to look — and Q had nothing but time. Sea shells, snowflakes, crystals, butterfly and moth wings, honeycombs, the structure of plants and flowers... There were patterns everywhere.

The watch, however was a special case. It wasn’t symmetrical, but it was ordered — a cascade of reactions that all led to one simple conclusion: the moving of the arrows on the front. Q had discovered this quite by accident; curious, he’d removed the glass and pushed the arrows, and nearly dropped the watch when he’d felt the toothed circles in the back spin as a result. It became immediately obvious that the arrows were meant to do that repeatedly — Q had some foggy memory of ‘time’ from his past encounters with the Bonds — but something had broken.

Q didn’t like it when things were broken.

He’d taken apart the watch, lifting toothed circle after toothed circle out, looking for any sign of whatever it was that made the watch not work. He kept getting distracted by foxes that wanted to play and moths that wanted to dance and moonflowers whose intoxicating scent made him want to do nothing more than hide in the bell-shaped flower and watch the stars.

When he finally found the problem — a broken tooth that had snapped free from its circle — it took just a touch of magic to repair. The longest, hardest part was putting it all back together, but even that wasn’t really that time consuming or difficult.

From sundown to sunup, Q worked tirelessly, ignoring the calls of his woodland friends, to please James. When the watch finally ticked perfectly in his hands, Q screeched in triumph and sped from his den to the house. The moon’s position in the sky told him that he didn’t have too much time before the sun came up and he would have to retreat, but he desperately wanted to see James’ pleased face when he saw the working watch — to press his hand to James’ throat again to feel the vibration of a laugh.

But when he landed on the window sill to the room that James and the other had shared, there was no one there. He peered through the closed window to search for any evidence that they were hiding or perhaps would be back soon, but there was nothing; even the human-made bundles of fabric were gone from the floor.

Disappointment flooded through Q, but he wouldn’t let himself give in to it yet. There were a lot of rooms in the giant house; perhaps they had just moved. He didn’t try to open the closed window, remembering the latch that James had had to open from the inside; instead, he darted down to the front door and crawled under the rather substantial crack at the bottom.

His first stop was the weapons room, for morbid curiosity rather than anything else. His stick-pile was still in the centre of the room, long since neglected in favour of the watch. Nothing else was different, and Q left quickly.

A scan of most of the other rooms revealed nothing except the hints of recent human occupation. Footprints and handprints in the dust, little bits of paper and other unknown objects scattered here and there, and the bitter smell of recently burning wood were all the evidence that was left of his human’s recent presence.

Frantic and desperate, Q raced to the biggest room in the house where he had frightened James into pulling a weapon on him the first night he was there. He was in such a hurry that he almost ran face-first into a brown glass bottle. Confused, Q stepped back and observed, surprised to find that there was an entire wall of them blocking his path. Huffing in annoyance, he crawled up the wall and to the centre of the ceiling, wondering if it were some sort of challenge James wanted him to overcome for the reward of finding him in the middle.

But there was nothing. When Q made it to the centre of the ceiling and looked down, he found nothing but a circle of brown bottles. It was lovely and would catch the moonlight from the windows in the most amazing ways when the weather was right for it, but it wasn’t what Q wanted. He wanted to give the watch back to his human.

Q spent the remaining time he had left until sunrise wandering the house, waiting for his human to come back. From roof to walls to floors, he wandered every inch of the building, watch clutched carefully to his chest, waiting.

But there was nothing.

Sunrise was only moments away when Q finally gave up. He headed to his nest, where the sunlight couldn’t touch him, thinking that perhaps they had just got lost in a game and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Humans didn’t have the same limitations as faeries — sunlight and moonlight had no effect on them. They didn’t have immortality that could be stripped away at the first touch of heated sun. They could spend all night and all day in the woods or on the moor without ill consequence.

Q was still telling himself this when he finally made it to the middle of his nest — only to be stopped short by the sight of something silver and shiny and decidedly _not his_ taking up the middle. Curious, Q gently set the watch down and approached the new thing.

It was about half the size of a human hand, and marked with a red and silver symbol near the top that looked like many of the decorations in the smaller brick building. It took Q several minutes of searching and playing to discover that, like the watch, there were things hidden inside the shiny shell. Impressed by clever human designs, Q settled happily and started playing. He found that he could pull out four different things: a blade, a not-a-blade that was rough along its surface and curved at the tip, a pointed thing with two crossed ridges on it, and a mechanical thing with two tiny, facing blades perfect for cutting if he pressed the handle down.

The sun came up, went down, came up again, and went down again before Q was finished playing with the shiny new thing. Though he was aware of time passing, he didn’t pay it any heed in favour of pulling apart the thing to see how it worked inside. Finally, when the sun came up a third time, Q realised that his human should have been back by now.

Leaving the watch and the new shiny thing in his nest, Q left as soon as the sun went down. Humans were fragile things, after all, and he didn’t want them to be lost or afraid. They could be wandering the moor or the wood, or held captive by another faerie who had found them too interesting to allow them to simply wander past. A flame of jealousy rose up in Q at the thought. James was _his_.

Vengefully, he went to search every faerie den and tree and hollow, but he found no trace of either human.

Time meant little to Q. Days came and went in an endless chain of predictable repetition that was easy to ignore. But when the snow began to fall, Q knew.

They weren’t coming back.

He stared at the new thing, finally seeing it for what it was. A goodbye offering. Q felt his heart tremble and break in his chest as the loneliness gripped him tighter than ever. _It wasn’t fair_ , he thought bitterly as he threw pebbles and sticks and bottles at the walls. He hadn’t had any time with his human — it had been days, not years. And for the first time, Q hadn’t just heard laughter, but felt it. He’d pressed his hands to the human’s throat — _James’_ throat — and felt not fear, or trepidation, or wariness, but laughter. Joy.

Angry beyond all reasoning, Q spent days or longer breaking every breakable thing in the house. He wanted James back. It wasn’t fair that he should be left here with nothing but the evidence of abandonment. The windows were particularly satisfying to smash — the sound as they broke, the reflection of moonlight as they fell... Q wished there were more, when he was done.

That was when an offering appeared.

Delighted but confused, Q smelled the honey when the moor finally froze over. He was so excited at the prospect that James had returned that he didn’t bother with caution this time; he simply skated across the frozen lake as fast as he could, rendering him a mere blur to the badger he had been playing with. But when he climbed to the top of the stump, he couldn’t find James’ scent. It belonged to someone familiar, a scent that he found at the house sometimes, though the human wasn’t _his_. Not like James.

He followed the scent through the wild, to a smaller building at the edge of the moor. There was no sign of his human, so Q focused on the one who had left the offering. It was a woman who sat in front of a mirror, combing her hair and humming an old tune that even Q recognised. She was older than his human, and female, and beautiful, and the song and sight of a familiar symbol on her chest lulled Q into perching on her windowsill. He watched and listened, content, until she set her brush down and turned to the window.

The thick glass turned her little shriek of alarm into a high, thin sound. Startled, Q faded into the darkness, but then he remembered her scent and the offering, and he let the moonlight play over him again.

She stared at him, and as he met her eyes, he felt her fear ease. She was old, and her blood was tied to the land as much as James’, even though she wasn’t one of Q’s. And she knew him, because she rose slowly, one hand clutching the shiny silver symbol at her throat, the other extended to the window.

Quietly, she undid the latch. “If you mean no harm, enter and be welcome,” she said formally.

Q smiled softly and, slow enough for even human eyes to see, walked over the sill and into her room. He eyed her still-extended, open hand for a moment, then hopped into it, making himself small enough to fit. It wasn’t _right_ — she wasn’t his — but he had questions and touch always made speaking easier.

Just as slowly and carefully, she turned so she could pull the window closed with her other hand. “My husband’s due to return soon, but I can give you a honey cake, if you’d like.” She took one step towards the door.

Alarmed at the movement, Q jumped out of her hand and onto the table by the mirror. He looked at the door warily, then at the woman, then at the closed window. He didn’t want to leave yet, but when he did choose to go, he’d need to escape quickly. The closed window was a little frightening, but Q faintly remembered how humans were more sensitive to the cold than he was. He didn’t feel as if he were purposefully being trapped.

“All right, then. Come along,” she said, and wrapped up in more clothing, covering her from neck to wrists to ankles, before she stepped out the door and into the rest of the building.

She went into a warm little room, smaller than any of the rooms at the house where Q’s humans lived. She opened a metal box, like nothing Q had ever seen, and the air filled with the rich, sweet scent of fruit and vegetables and the distasteful smell of meat. She took something out — _cream_ , Q recognised — and poured it into a bowl, which she set onto a flat wooden table. Then she took two cakes, rich with honey, and put them onto a flattened bowl, which she put beside the cream.

“In your honour, guardian,” she said, and sat down by the offerings, though she made no further move to touch them.

The familiar words soothed Q, and he made his way quickly to the table. He tore off a piece of honey cake and dipped it in the cream to nibble on. But a need for offering wasn’t why he’d come. He stood watching her, waiting for her to settle again. She didn’t try to hurt him when he’d settled in her hand, and the warmth and connection had felt good. Even if she wasn’t James.

“Do you need something, guardian?” she asked, watching him without fear or confusion. “Has something gone wrong at Skyfall Lodge?”

Skyfall. _My home_ , Q’s human had said. If that were true, where was he?

“James,” he said, crouching next to the honey cake.

The woman twitched as though surprised. “James? James Bond?” she asked.

Excited and pleased at the recognition, Q grinned and nodded. “Bond,” he repeated. “Mine.”

“Oh,” she breathed quietly. “I’m sorry, guardian, but James has gone back to London. He’s joined the Navy. He’s... on the water, on a boat. He won’t be back for a long time.”

Q stared at her in confusion, understanding very few words. _Sorry_ , he knew. _Water_ , he knew. _Long time_ , he knew as well. But all together, the words didn’t make sense.

“Long time?” he asked, focusing on the most alarming of the words, searching her face for clues.

She nodded sympathetically. “A very long time, I’m afraid. He left the land.” She glanced around, and then pointed off in the distance, towards the warmer parts of the world. “Beyond the sea.”

“Beyond the sea?” Q repeated. He’d heard of the sea, some time ago, but he couldn’t place it, couldn’t envision it. All he knew was that it was far away. Not here. “Gone?”

The woman looked at Q for a moment, assessing, before she gave another tiny nod. “London,” she said. “To London and beyond, over the sea.”

“Gone,” Q repeated, narrowing his eyes. It was a concept he was all too familiar with; gone meant never coming back. No thanking James. No giving him back the watch. The watch. “Gift,” he said, this time with sadness rather than anger.

Hesitantly, as though not understanding, the woman gestured to the bowl of cream. “We’ll remember you, guardian,” she said tentatively. “And perhaps... perhaps he’ll have a child, one day? Though I don’t know that he’ll ever get married...” Her words were hesitant, losing their meaning as her voice grew softer.

Q was shaking his head, more and more fervently as she went on. He didn’t need gifts from _her_. “Gift for James,” he said, stumbling over the extended use of words. “Watch.”

“Oh,” she breathed, and rose abruptly, startling him. He dove into a shadowy corner of the room, but emerged when all she did was stand and go in the other direction to fetch something. She turned back, looking around, holding something small and pale yellow in her hand. “Guardian? Oh, there you are,” she said when he peered out of the shadows. She came to the table, moving slowly, and set down what she’d found.

It was thin and flat, the size of two human hands, and covered faint parallel lines of blue. The upper part of it had black marks over the blue lines.

Q walked forward, curious, peering at the yellow thing with the black marks. He peered up at the woman curiously, waiting for her to explain. It must have something to do with James, but he had no idea how.

“This is where James is,” she said, and turned the thing around. She ran her finger over the black marks at the top. “James Bond. And this” — she tapped another set of marks — “is London. He’s joined the Royal Navy. These are words, guardian. With these words, I can send the watch to James.”

Q grinned. _Where James is,_ he understood clearly. He had no idea how — but he could figure it out.

“James,” he said hopping on her shoulder to peer down at the yellow thing, hoping perspective would help him decipher it.

She went very still for just a moment. Then she turned the yellow thing around once more, and she started touching each individual mark. “J-A-M-E-S. James. These marks mean ‘James’,” she said, running her finger underneath the marks. “James. And these” — she touched the next set, to the right — “these mean Bond. B-O-N-D. James Bond. So all of this tells us where James is.”

“James Bond,” Q repeated. He tugged on the woman’s hair, thinking. Patterns. He still didn’t fully understand, but he knew that all he needed was time. Once he deciphered the marks, he’d know where James was. And he could bring him the watch. And play games.

With one last thoughtful hum, Q hopped off the woman’s shoulder and onto the yellow thing. He tugged at the corner experimentally, and was delighted to find that the thing was malleable. He could make it smaller, make it easier to transport. Just a few folds, and it would no longer be bigger than him.

“Can I have that back?”

Possessively, Q dragged the yellow thing away. He needed it to find James.

“Just to copy it,” she said reassuringly. She stood again, this time moving slowly, and went back to where she’d got the yellow thing. Q watched, hopeful that she’d give him another clue, another way to find James, but instead she came back with another yellow thing, with one with blue lines and no black marks at all.

He watched, eyes narrowed, as she looked from one yellow thing to the other. She had something else in her hand, like a white stick. When she dragged the end over her yellow thing, it left behind black marks.

Suddenly, Q’s thoughts came alight with understanding. The stick made marks. _James_ had used that stick to create the marks. He watched the stick anxiously, and as soon as the woman put it down, he snatched at it. He had to make himself a little bigger to hold both the stick and the yellow thing, but he needed them both.

“That’s — Oh, all right. You can have it,” the woman said with a little laugh. “It’s —”

She went silent as the door behind her opened. Cold air gusted into the room. A man walked in, large and bulky beneath layers of clothing and a thick beard covering his face. “Blasted freezing!” he said in a booming voice.

Startled, Q snatched at his new treasures and dove for freedom, slipping out just as the door closed on the woman’s sudden, startled shout. The wind threatened to tear the flat yellow thing from his hands, and he gripped it tightly as he rushed for the nearest rabbit warren. He’d return to his nest underground, so the snow and wind couldn’t damage the fragile thing that would help him find James. Then he could set about deciphering the marks.


	7. Chapter 7

The years weren’t precisely kind to James Bond, though he thrived all the same, despite having been shot, stabbed, electrocuted, arrested, imprisoned, and killed more than once. Sometimes, he wondered how he’d got onto this path. Late at night, sitting beside Alec in a bar as the weary bartender tried to find a way to throw out his last two patrons, he’d ask where the fuck they’d gone wrong, and Alec would point out that it was all his bloody idea, and they’d eventually realise there was nowhere else they could have ended up. They weren’t the type to settle down, even with each other, so why not die for a cause?

Not that it wasn’t bloody exhausting. Sometimes, one of them would disappear for a night or a weekend or, most recently, three months. Sometimes, one of them would bring up the idea of retiring, of perhaps going back to Skyfall Lodge.

After twenty years, James had just about convinced himself that anything _odd_ they’d seen had been the result of too many old wives’ tales, too much vodka, too many hormones, and possibly some temporary form of rabies brought on by being attacked by wild foxes.

But something always called them back to duty. So here James was, dragging his arse up the steps to the National Gallery, thinking only in the most distant ways that as clandestine meeting places went, this was a nice one. The last time he’d had a clandestine meet-up, it had been in the catacombs under Prague, and his informant had tried to knife him.

He rather hoped this meeting would go better.

And then, as he sat on the comfortably padded bench, thinking about the hunt ahead of him, a boy came to sit down beside him. He was thin and just a bit feral, with wild hair and wide, intelligent eyes and long limbs. The avaricious side of James reared its head, _wanting_ , but this definitely was neither the time nor the place. James felt old and half-dead and would probably end up completely dead before the week was out, and he needed to put all of his energy into his hunt. He had nothing to spare for seducing a gorgeous little scrap like this, probably half his age and living with a half-dozen uni students while studying arts or social activism.

“Always makes me feel a bit melancholy,” the boy said in a musical voice that slipped over James like silk. “A grand old warship being ignominiously hauled away for scrap. The inevitability of time, don’t you think?” And then he turned to look at James, asking, “What do you see?”

 _A too-clever child_ , James thought, trying to ignore the protective side of his nature. He had the impossible urge to take the boy home and feed him and keep him the hell away from a world where insane men toyed with governments and threatened the lives of soldiers risking everything for peace.

He muttered some answer, paying little attention, and excused himself, thinking that now he’d have to call Tanner, assuming his number was programmed into James’ new phone. The meet was burned. The quartermaster wouldn’t show up, if someone else had made contact, even unintentionally and innocently.

“James,” the boy said softly, both the tone and lilt of his voice changing subtly into something more familiar. He reached out, but withdrew his hand to stuff it in his pocket, digging for something. “I have something for you.”

“God,” James sighed, sinking back down onto the bench. “ _You’re_ the new quartermaster? Aren’t you a bit” — _innocent_ — “young?”

The word stopped the boy’s movements, and he lifted his head to peer incredulously through the fringe of his hair at James. “No,” he said, mouth quirking. “I am the Quartermaster, though. It wasn’t hard, once I learned about language. And technology. All just patterns.”

Something tugged at James’ memory — something about the boy’s eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked warily, though he wasn’t... _suspicious_. And wasn’t that odd? He was suspicious of everything and everyone, except for Alec. Even M wasn’t to be trusted.

The quartermaster stared at James for a long moment, body unnaturally still, gaze wandering over James, head to toe, in a way that would have felt intimate if it weren’t for how captivated the boy seemed by what he saw. Finally, he pulled something free from his pocket. He hesitated, turning it in his hands. “I fixed it,” he said quietly. Then he extended his hand, something shiny and round and brass in his palm.

Slowly, James lifted the watch, memory creeping back through him — impossible memory. Because this watch was _his_ , from thirty years ago or more, given to him soon before his parents had died. It had been old and fiddly even then, and when it had finally stopped working, he’d lost it.

_… given it away..._

He couldn’t quite recall when or where —

_Skyfall._

— but he thought... he thought...

_The lightning-struck tree by the water’s edge. The old traditions._

“Q,” he whispered, remembering — _allowing_ himself to remember the impossible creature. Twenty years of the reality of war and espionage, of science and the mundane and the exotic, all of it built in layers above the memory of a dark, spindly creature with lambent green eyes, a creature who’d been somehow _his_ , bound up with Skyfall Lodge.

Then anger flashed through him, searing white-hot through the fatigue that been wearing him down for months, even before Eve shot him. Q was _his_ , and he’d given the watch to Q, and now this boy — this _child_ — had it.

He turned, fist clenched around the watch, and took hold of the boy’s arm, not caring that they were surrounded by tourists and guards. “What did you do to him?” he demanded in a voice that was soft only because it was more threatening that way. Child or not, he’d tear the boy apart of he’d _done something_ to the impossible creature that somehow nested at Skyfall Lodge.

The quartermaster’s face lit up in a grin that was far more enthusiastically pleased than James ever saw on an adult’s face. It was mischievous and thrilled and entirely free of the tired and hopeless sarcasm that James was so used to from those he met in his line of work.

“I walked into the sun,” the boy said, still grinning.

For a moment, James had no idea what the boy was talking about. If the boy had ever even _seen_ sunlight, James would be surprised; he was pale as a ghost.

Then he remembered Patricia and Kincaid’s stories — the stories that had helped him know how to appease the creature whose claws and teeth had left him and Alec bleeding and scarred. The fae guardian of Skyfall Lodge was a creature of moonlight and shadow, not malevolent but mischievous. Sunlight was anathema.

“You...” was as far as he got before he faltered. He was still holding the boy’s arm; he _couldn’t_ let go. Because either this boy was a threat, an enemy, or he was something impossible. Something _more_. And either way, the boy was _his_.

The boy didn’t try to pull himself away from James; he just watched with the same mix of enthusiasm and mischievousness. “Yes.” With his free hand, he started digging in yet another pocket. “I fixed it, and I wanted to give it back. And thank you for the knife. Though I didn’t know what it was at the time.” He withdrew his hand from the pocket, and extended yet another object. This time, it was a crumpled, brown, and extremely delicate bit of folded paper.

James let go so he could take the paper. The folds were soft and worn; the handwriting, his. Heart pounding, he read his old post address, from his earliest days with the SBS. “I gave this to Patricia,” he said softly, remembering. He remembered sitting in the kitchen with Patricia and Alec, talking about the fae — about _Q_ — and how she’d made him write down his address.

“I sought her out after she left cream and honey for me at the tree. I’d hoped she knew what had happened to you. I had tried to return the fixed watch, but you...” The boy stopped, and stared down at the marble floor of the gallery. “It took me a little while to make up my mind. I was lonely.”

 _Sunlight_ , James thought, letting the paper fall so he could put his hand on the boy’s arm more gently this time.

No. Not ‘the boy’. The impossible, beautiful fae.

“You’re him,” he said quietly. “You’re _that_ Q.”

Q looked back up at James and nodded. “I learned language. And tinkering. The mechanics of computers weren’t difficult at all. The languages took longer, but it was still just a matter of mastering the patterns and syntax. From there, it was easy to find a place for myself, where you were.”

James found himself touching Q’s face, though he had no memory of moving his hand. His skin was soft and warm and real. “But... the sunlight. Q...”

Q sighed, eyes fluttering shut, as he leaned into James’ hand. “Touch,” he said quietly in a voice that belonged to the fae from so long ago. He stayed there for a long moment, eyes shut, breathing quietly, until the laughter of someone behind him seemed to jostle him back into alertness. He withdrew, an embarrassed smile playing on his lips. “I apologise. I dislike the touch of other humans, but you’re mine.”

“Human — _You_ look human,” James said, insistently reaching out to Q’s chin, studying his face. He was exotic and beautiful, yes, but wholly human, without any hint of _otherness_. Warm skin, deep hazel eyes, a hint of stubble rough under James’ fingers... Then he whispered, “The sunlight. You — you _are_ human now, aren’t you? You _became_ human?”

Q nodded gently enough to not dislodge James’ hand from his chin. “If the sunlight touches a shadow walker, we become human.” He closed his eyes again and shuddered. “It was unpleasant. But I wanted to find you.” He opened his eyes and peered at James with something like accusation. “You weren’t there when I looked,” he said, waving his hand at the paper.

Unaccountably guilty, James pulled Q into his arms. “I’m sorry. My god, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, wondering _why_ Q would give up everything he was, just for _him_. Even twenty years ago, he’d been nothing special. Certainly not worth giving up _everything_.

Q melted against him, and James held him close, not caring that they were in the middle of the bloody National Gallery, drawing attention to what should have been a quick, clandestine meeting. M could damned well go hang; this was more important.

Then a new thought occurred to him, and he felt himself go tense, wondering if everything had suddenly become more complicated. “Alec,” he said, remembering how viciously Q had attacked him. “He’s — If you’re the quartermaster, then... you know...”

Q pulled back and looked at James curiously. “Alec?” His gaze fell to the paper, then the watch, and his eyes lit up with understanding. “Oh. That.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I thought he was hurting you, and I was trying to help. He’s lucky he escaped with his life. I didn’t understand...” He shook his head, and the embarrassed smile returned. “I understand now. It’s wonderful that you still have each other.”

“We don’t —” James cut off, feeling himself blush, which was absolutely fucking ridiculous. “It’s not... It’s occasional, but not... _Fuck_ ,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair, wondering how the hell to explain sex to... to a no-longer-immortal fae-turned-human, who was watching him with plain curiosity.

As soon as he seemed to realise that James wasn’t going to say anything further on the topic, Q straightened, pulling himself free from James’ arms. He reached inside his jacket — presumably for another pocket — and pulled out a small, black case. “For you,” he said, passing it over.

A glance showed that it was a standard-issue Walther — or perhaps not, because the rear sights were slightly altered. James closed the case and set it on his lap so he could put a hand on Q’s shoulder. “Do you need somewhere to stay? You can —” He cut off with a wry laugh. “Fuck. I’m living on Alec’s sofa only because I broke into his flat. I don’t even have anything to offer you. They sold off everything. Do you want the key to Alec’s flat? Do you need money?”

Something shifted in Q’s expression, and he brought up both hands to James’ face. “I don’t need anything like that. I have a place in your world now. Once I made up my mind, I applied myself to learning everything I needed to know to blend into the human realm. It was easy. _Is_ easy. I took care of everything first, while I had all of my magic. I gave myself a human history and a place in your world, before I walked into the sun.” His hands slid down to James’ chest, and he frowned sadly. “I wish I had enough magic left to fix you.”

James sighed and covered Q’s hands with one of his own, still holding onto the watch and the box with the gun. “I don’t need to be fixed, Q. But you...” He couldn’t resist brushing a hand over Q’s face, touching his glasses as an excuse to let his fingers linger against soft, warm skin. “There must be something I can do for you.”

“I...” Q started, then stopped, frowning. He reached into yet another pocket and brought out an envelope. “I know you have things to do. An enemy to deal with.” He passed over the envelope, and Bond opened it to see plane tickets. “But maybe when you get back, we can play games.” He smiled sadly. “The humans think I’m odd, and the foxes won’t play with me anymore.”

James laughed softly, absolutely enchanted. No one had wanted to play with him — at least not in a way that didn’t involve knives and screams — for his whole life, it seemed. “I would love to,” he said, dropping the envelope on top of the gun. He leaned in close, one hand on the back of Q’s neck, and kissed his forehead. It hurt, thinking that Q had given up everything for him, just in time for him to leave again.

Q froze under the kiss, holding so perfectly still that he was like a statue in James’ hands. When James pulled away, however, Q leaned with him as if chasing the touch. Q’s desperate need made James flinch guiltily. He knew his leaving was only temporary, but it felt like abandonment.

He looked into Q’s eyes and said, “I promise, I’ll come back. No matter what, I _will_ come back.”

“I’ll help,” Q promised firmly. “I am _exceptional_ at patterns, and applying them to the pursuit of information through computer networks. And I use the little bits of my magic I have left to help when I need to create a door in a truly impenetrable firewall. I can help keep you safe, now that I’m the head of TSS.”

James smiled at him, brushing his hands over Q’s face. “Patricia said you’re my family’s guardian. Is that what you want to be? I’m afraid it’s more than a full-time job.”

“Guardian,” Q repeated, the puckish grin returning. “Yes. I’ll be very good at it. And I won’t bite Alec again. I won’t bite anyone again, I don’t think.” He frowned. “Useless human teeth. Knives are perfectly acceptable substitutes. As are bullets. Not that I use guns much, beyond my work in improving them. Far too noisy for my taste.”

“Please don’t stab or shoot Alec,” James said, brushing a finger over Q’s mouth. It was intimate and personal and he had no right, but Q was _his_ in a way that went beyond anything James had ever felt. Feeling that smile was just one more way for him to experience this new, incredible reality of Q. “Or anyone at all. You have me to do that for you, now. I’ll protect you, if you’ll let me. If you want me to.”

“This body _is_ fragile,” Q said with a quirked eyebrow, moving his mouth to speak under James’ thumb. “I’m still not accustomed to it. And I’m slow, too, which I don’t care for much. But I’m learning to tame heavy human limbs to do with as I please, such as running. And you can teach me more,” he added with the absolute certainty of someone who knew they wouldn’t be turned down.

“I would love to,” James said honestly. Then he grinned, allowing himself to feel the interest that had been there before, when he’d first laid eyes on what he thought was a perfectly normal young man. “And I rather _like_ that body, fragile or not.”

Q’s expression turned sharp and speculative. He moved, sliding closer to James, until they were pressed together hip to knee. “There do seem to be things that make up for the fragility. I’m starting to learn about pleasure. Sugar and hot drinks and touch. Will you show me more of that, too?”

Jealousy twisted through James at the thought of someone _else_ touching Q. He took a deep breath and put his hand on Q’s leg, though he told himself it was only for a moment. Too much and he’d never leave, and to hell with hunting Patrice. “When I come back, I’ll show you anything you want. Things you’ve never imagined,” he promised quietly. “I know I shouldn’t ask, but will you wait for me?”

Q stared intently at James’ hand on his leg, and he shifted. A flash of surprise crossed his face; then he grinned and shifted again, dragging his leg under James’ fingers, apparently experimenting. “It only feels like that from you,” Q said curiously, still looking down at where they touched. “Of course I’ll wait.”

James took another deep breath, and then another, and finally found it in him to move his hand away. “If I don’t leave now, I won’t leave, and we’ll both be sacked when M finds out. Let me go kill this bastard for you, and then... anything you want. Anything at all,” he promised.

Q swallowed and nodded. “Thank you,” he said, though he didn’t move away. “But there is one thing, before you go. Something I’ve waited a long time for, stood under the sun for.” He reached up again for James’ throat. “Again,” he said softly.

Confused, James lifted his hand to touch Q’s. “Again?”

“You don’t remember?” Q asked, then shook his head. “I don’t know any jokes, and this face isn’t as easy to change shape without hurting it.”

Suddenly remembering, James laughed, thinking of all the things anyone had ever asked of him, this might be the best.

Raw delight transformed Q’s expression, and he leaned in, pressing even closer, grinning at James from bare inches away. He shifted his hand to settle more fully over James’ vocal chords. “Again. Last time, before you go,” he insisted with almost childlike enthusiasm.

James laughed again, and this time, he leaned in to brush his lips against Q’s, not giving a damn what anyone else might think or say.

Q’s hand slipped and he gasped; he almost fell forward, pressing his mouth back against James’. Instead of trying to take control, James let Q do as he liked, and though the kiss was unskilled and messy and a bit desperate, he’d never felt something so sensual, so wonderful, in all his life.

When Q backed away to stare at him, eyes wide behind his glasses, James touched a finger to Q’s dark, parted lips and said, “If I don’t leave now, I won’t.”

“I...” Q started, then stopped. He took a breath and leaned away from James’ hand. “All right. I bought your flat and things from MI6. I knew you were alive. I could feel you out in the world, even if I didn’t know where. Come there when you’re done.”

“You?” Slowly, James smiled, thinking it so very appropriate. _Guardian_ , Patricia had called Q. He gave Q another kiss, this one in gratitude, and said, “I would love to come home to you.”

“Home,” Q repeated, grinning again. He stood slowly, and took a methodical step back, as if it were a difficult thing to do. “Soon, please.”

“Wait.” James balanced the box on his lap so he could take off his watch. It was one of the few things that had survived from before — a durable, ridiculously expensive Omega, meant for diving. In its place, he put on his old watch, and he offered the Omega to Q. “For you.”

Q’s eyes widened again, and the step he took forward this time looked almost involuntary. “What a lovely, shiny bit,” he said with an awed smile. He reached out and traced the edge of the new watch, then tapped the glass. Then he looked up at James with confusion. “It works.”

“It’s not for you to fix. It’s a gift. An offering,” James explained. “I want you to have it, to keep.”

“Oh,” Q said in a low, breathless whisper. He carefully picked up the watch and cradled it in his hand. “Thank you. I won’t take it apart,” he said with serious reassurance.

“No. Thank you,” he said, leaning down to pick up the fallen piece of paper. He carefully put it in his jacket pocket. He would keep it close; it had brought Q to him.

“Be safe,” Q said. “I’ll be there, behind the comms and the networks, watching and helping.” Then he smiled one more time, and turned to leave. He moved slowly but with grace, looking with intent curiosity at each painting as he passed them on his way to the exit.

James stood, and for a moment, he could only stare at Q — beautiful and perfect and human and _his_. For twenty years, he had risked his life because that was what he did. That was what he and Alec did, and that was why he kept going back into the field.

Then he gave Q a smile, and he turned and left the National Gallery. He had a mission, but he had something else, too.

For the first time, he had a reason to come back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're really enjoying crossing the very modern James Bond with the magical world, in this and other stories. It's been fun, and we hope you're all enjoying it as much as we have. Thank you all for reading! 
> 
> We currently have no plans for a sequel to this story.
> 
> You can find updates to all of our stories, as well as inspirational images, writing advice, and more at our Tumblr sites:
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**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Offering Tree Cover](https://archiveofourown.org/works/838343) by [consultingpiskies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/consultingpiskies/pseuds/consultingpiskies)
  * [Waiting for the Sun to Set](https://archiveofourown.org/works/899976) by [CaticalRam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaticalRam/pseuds/CaticalRam)




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